OZM General Discussion, page-605

Some further data I posted in another stock on the GS forecasts and what is wrong with them - anyway, current slowdown reminds me of what happened in the 2019 - 2021, before we know what happened thereafter (just look at PLS). At the end of the day, spodumene prices are still forecast to be well above what most current and prospective producers have put into their DFS. Anyway, some further posts duplicated below. For OZM all this is meaningless until they define a resource - lithium markets IMO will have more stability when China's dominance is broken. The thing with China however is that they invest long term and take any huts short term, and probably why they control so much of the value chain from rare earths to lithium chemicals (and before anyone says but yeah cheap labour, no those process are capex dependent and teh biggest cost is electricity (which ironically they then source Australian LNG and coal to produce electricity - note gas and diesel are the key drivers in the kilns that produce lithium chemicals downstream as well - quite ironic given the resources Australia has and yes I know OZM 's deposit is in Brazil - on kilns refer Post #: 45802869:

Again below is posted more for information purposes than anything related to OZM - the posts seek to go through wjhat is happening in markets and outlook. There is also the issue around China's stocking/destocking practices (inventory) where I suspect part of teh recent falls in prices has been attributed to destocking (whilst obviously ensuring you can give a clip around the head to your competitors whose investment outlook is years not like Chinas been decades).

When OZM provides its drilling results I will comment more, but don't post much here because need to find and define a resource first, although having visible spodumene here is a good start (now a question around grade and extent before can even consider commerciality considerations).

All IMO IMO IMO

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I think the more important aspect is the view that internal China will be the largest producer from the GS table which noone has discussed (which I find intriguing itself). And most of China's internal production is expected to come from brine and lepidolite.

That is ironic in itself because to get to lithium hydroxide it is a two stage process (and I doubt whether that it internal brine will be suitable to a large extent for the growing lithium hydroxide market and/or is going to be far costlier to make than converting spodumene to hydroxide - think NCA/NCM batteries in particular as I posted a while back), let alone lepidolite production (refer my previous post). Looking at the figures, over 75% of China's supposedly whopping and growing lithium mine production will come from lepidolite and brines.

I posted on what I thought of lepidolite above - spodumene is a far cleaner source of lithium than lepidolite.

On batteries my views on the most preferred batteries going forward are in these two posts - on battery types Post #: 69711272. Table clearly IMO has a lot of faults associated with it - on quality of resource and costs of getting to hydroxide from spodumene compared to say brines also refer Post #: 69711272.

8horse, that table, or the relevant sections, I duplicate below - the first column is 2019 and the last column is 2030 in the table, and year on year production in between. Australian production which the table says will be lower than Chinese production in 2030 will predominantly be spodumene. Typical GS crap IMO:



As another comment when you add the 2030 numbers you get LCE equivalent of 3101GWh. I am now going to bring down the table I posted above as well in another post - if the battery is 45kWh that is equivalent to around 70 million EVs per year. Higher kWh (say 60) in the battery in the battery makes that number lower (noting we are simply talking here about lithiums use in EVs and not its other uses).

I have seen figures higher than GS 3101 GWh of demand capacity (not supply capacity) for 2030. As I suspect many on here have too.

Refer: Mapped: EV Battery Manufacturing Capacity, by Region (visualcapitalist.com)

and

Global lithium-ion battery capacity to rise five-fold by 2030 | Wood Mackenzie

and


Forecast: Li-Ion Battery Market Might Exceed 6 TWh/Year By 2030 (insideevs.com)


I guess, one has to make up their mind whether is the 3000 GWh estimate low for 2030 - appears to be low too me. If it is 5000 GWh in 2030 the below shows the number of mines required (spodumene equivalent which means you have converted brines to spodumene equivalent if that makes sense). Notwithstanding water issues in Chile by the way. From post Post #: 65817444 is this table:



The above is IMO with a cold VB in hand.

Time will tell, but I expect a rebound in pricing, and obviously those who get into production early, like LTR, will reap the rewards as prices move up. For LTR if it can bring in costs at the stated targets and meet the recovery rates, even at a price of US$1,500 per tonne for 6% grade spodumene it will make a killing. Time again will tell how the LTR plant operates in ramp up and beyond, but having a high grade resource with low deleterious elements (compared to PLS) and learning from the mistakes of others IMO will help in ensuring ramp up can happen smoothly (but always risks there) IMO for LTR.

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and on LPD lepidolite conversion plant:

vmp, not sure what is happening so I will have another go and then give up. Just not copying across the removal of an error I made.

No worries, in terms of my post on a two step process that was in relation to brines.

Yes lepidolite can be a one stage process through to hydroxide theoretically, but lepidolite itself has a lot more impurities than spodumene (hence a previous post of mine on the subject) so it may be a lot more difficult to get to hydroxide than through using spodumene etc etc. I guess the proof in the pudding will be when a LPD builds a conversion plant for producing hydroxide on the same scale as you see typical conversion plants that accept spodumene concentrate as a feedstock.

These are pretty small plants that LPD is building for lepidolite, almost like a pilot plant I would say.

To illustrate, I found this article:LepidicoThe article has this paragraph in it, so agree with your comment btw:


5,700 tpa of lithium hydroxide (and I presume it is lithium hydroxide monohydrate - grades 16.5% Li) is equivalent to 6% grade spodumene concentrate equivalent feedstock of 37,050 tonnes. If it is lithium hydroxide (which grades 29% Li been the output that becomes 29/16.5 * 37050 = 65,120 tonnes of equivalent spodumene feedstock (yes I realise it is lepidolite). In terms of LPD I felt they were producing lithium hydroxide monohydrate (which is your feedstock to EVs and what most prices quoted relate to) as against lithium hydroxide per se. So looks like quite a small plant.

5,700 tonnes (assuming it is monohydrate) converts to about 5000 tonnes LCE equivalent (LCE grade 18.8 Li) which converts to is equivalent to around 110,000 EVs (assuming battery size 50kWh). Conversion data here for those who may seek to duplicate this -Post #:37817451

If others have a view please share.

All IMO