Over Supply Will End...,,, page-3

China, China China control mid and downstream in the supply chain. According to BMI, they don't control the raw materials, but they are dominant in chem conversion, cathode/anode and battery cell production. IMHO, the bottleneck remains at the chem converters, deliberately or not, this slows/controls production all the way down to the end user. Therefore, raw materials from mines pile up at converter, while downstream from the converter is screaming for supply, and that demand pull is creating good margins for the converter, is it a deliberate strategy of not.......

Over the past few years up until recently, we have seem the ugly tactics from some of the incumbent Li miners (i.e. SQM), talking up expansion plans, etc, etc, which has somewhat helped the incumbents maintain or loose less market share.However, China is wining at present, dragging down raw material prices.

While there has been a lot of talk about localizing supply chains, much more so since the Shanghai shivers hit the global economy. However, what do those countries do for product supply in the next several years while they build out their local supply chains, expertise is thin on the ground too, particularly for brine projects and chem conversion.

China do not control rear earth raw materials either, but they do control the conversion capacity. Is China using the same playbook for lithium-ion battery supply chain, IMO, yes.