IMO its the fault of orocobre management not being transparent enough about the quality of their lithium they were selling. if they told the truth from the beginning, things would have been better (marketing wise). Joe Lowry got criticized a lot and IMO unfairly by orocobre shareholders, because he told the truth about the quality of orocobre lithium reprocessed in china. As a general rule of thumb, shareholders should take seriously what independant experts/consultants have to say. True, no expert is 100% indepedant, they are all on a pay roll one way or the other, so they could be biased towards such company or another one, but generally they dont just lie like that about numbers. they live by their reputation telling the numbers to those who pay, if they loose their credibility, they are done.
This is another reason orocobre got lucky, not only higher lithium prices allowed the company a "life saving" 85M$ capital raise in january 2016, but also it allowed the company selling sub-quality material at a high price.
IMO, quality will improve over time, if the chinese are able to reprocess the lithium and purify it even further, then Orocobre can do it too. it just takes time to achieve most of the production at the highest quality possible.
Given the difficulties they ran into producing traditional lithium carbonate, i can only imagine what difficulties they will encounter if they go the hydroxide new tehnology plant route. IMO orocobre is not ready yet for that unknown adventure. Better they expand their production with lithium carbonate and use what they learned from the super lengthy commissioning and ramping up prodcution process. this is already a 3 years of trial and error process, they cant afford another 3 years of trial and error for a new process. Once they expand production, they have enough cash, they could start taking more risks and go hydroxide route. Until then, better they stick with what they learned.
ORE Price at posting:
$3.32 Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
