The reply button isn't working but from the same article, Rio's purchase price of Arcadium implies a 93% higher spodumene price. If lithium carbonate prices rise by the same proportion then they will rise to above the price that Phoenix assumed in its project studies.
"Rio’s $9.9 billion Arcadium deal still provided WA miners a boost; the deal implied a long-term price for spodumene concentrate of $US1470 a tonne, according to RBC analysis.That is 93 per cent higher than the $US760 a tonne that spodumene concentrate was fetching last week, according to S&P Global Platts."
The article also mentions that not all Australian lithium miners will benefit from the US IRA. That is a positive for Phoenix's US based asset.
"while the fine detail of the Inflation Reduction Act suggests fewer Australian miners will benefit than originally thought."
It also explains why carbonate is being flavoured over hydroxide and brine is favoured over hard rockfor carbonate production;
"Lithium industry veteran Simon Hay, who was chief executive of Arcadium’s ASX-listed antecedent Galaxy Resources, says battery trends in the past two years have also flipped and now favour lithium carbonate, which can be made cheaper from brines than spodumene mines.The big trend in batteries over the past couple of years has been the rising market share of small electric vehicles powered by weaker and cheaper lithium-ferro-phosphate (LFP) batteries, at the expense of the more powerful nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) batteries typically found in expensive EVs.“That has certainly changed over the last few years, with carbonate starting to dominate and projected to be the majority share going forward with the rise of LFP batteries,” says Hay."
