Rio’s lithium category-killer set to shock boom’s hopefuls

Barry Fitzgerald

Resources Editor
Melbourne

Rio Tinto has confirmed its Jadar project in Serbia is a potential category-killer for the ambitions of the hundreds of juniors looking to hitch a ride on the battery-driven lithium boom.
The confirmation came in the form of Rio committing more funds to the lithium-borate project, taking it to the prefeasibility study stage. The additional $US20 million ($27.5m) in funding takes Rio’s investment in the project to date to $US70m.
Its category-killer status comes from Rio’s estimate that Jadar could be capable of supplying at least 10 per cent of global demand for lithium, which is forecast to soar on increased uptake of electric vehicles and growth in lithium-ion battery storage of solar and wind power.
Alan Davies, chief executive of Rio Tinto’s diamonds & minerals division, said in Rio’s in-house magazine, released in London last night, that the 2004 Jadar discovery was shaping up as an exciting project.
“Jadar would enable us to offer multiple supply sources to our existing boric acid customers,” he said.
And while the lithium component would make for a new commodity for Rio, Mr Davies said it was a resource that would be in high demand.
“The world will need a lot more lithium in the future for electric cars,” he said.
Jadar sits 140km west of Belgrade and is unique in that lithium and borates are found together. It is a combination not found anywhere else in the world and led to a new mineral being officially recognised — jadarite.
Richard Storrie, Rio’s general manager for Serbia, said it was “also unusual to find a new mineral in such quantities: it’s estimated there are over 100 million tonnes in the Jadar deposit”.
Because it is a new mineral, one of the key questions hanging over Jadar’s potential as a producer has been the ability to extract the lithium and borates. Rio reported progress on that front in the magazine.
“It’s a new mineral, so the production process will be unique,’’ Mr Storrie said.
“We have been running pilot plants to help us understand the issues of scaling up to full production. Having successfully piloted a batch process, we’re next testing integrated, continuous production.”
Pilot tests were carried out at Rio’s borates mining and refining operations in California, and more recently at its laboratory at Bundoora in Victoria. “These will provide the design parameters to develop full-scale process facilities,’’ Mr Storrie said.
Rio said the world market for electrified vehicles was expected to increase to more than 10 million vehicles a year by 2022, about 10 times the market size in 2014. Borates are used in heat resistant glass, fibreglass, ceramics, fertilisers, detergents, wood preservatives and many other household and commercial products.



(apologies if this has already been posted, I know it's up on another stock's thread, but I prefer the commentary over here)