Looks like a bit of supply will be entering the market by Sep-22 with MIN's Wodinga mine starting back up.
(Competitor intel for info share only, this is not a leading post...)Lithium rally brings Wodgina back to life
Peter KerResources reporterOct 25, 2021 – 5.54pmAustralia’s second-biggest lithium mine will resume production on the back of surging prices for the battery commodity.
Mineral Resources said Western Australia’s Wodgina mine would resume production before September 30 next year under an agreement reached with its partner, US lithium giant Albemarle.
Wodgina ranks behind only the Greenbushes mine – owned by Albemarle, Tianqi and IGO Limited – in terms of its ability to produce large volumes of lithium-rich spodumene concentrate.
But Mineral Resources said the mine, which was idled amid weak lithium prices in 2019, would restart at only about one-third of its 750,000 tonnes per year capacity.
“When market demand is sufficient, additional processing lines may be recommenced,” said the company.
At such volumes, Wodgina’s output would be smaller than that of Pilbara Minerals’ Pilgangoora hub and the Mount Marion mine that Mineral Resources owns in partnership with China’s Ganfeng.
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MINMineral Resources
$42.910 8.96%View MIN related articlesOct 20May 21Oct 2122.00044.00066.000Updated: Oct 26, 2021 – 9.13am. Data is 20 mins delayed.The only surprise in Wodgina’s restart is how long it took to announce and how long it will take to deliver.
Prices for all lithium products have surged over the past year and most analysts were surprised that a restart of Wodgina was not announced at an Albemarle investor day in September.
But Albemarle made clear that it did not want to restart Wodgina until it had secured more capacity to convert the spodumene concentrate into battery grade lithium.
That issue was resolved earlier this month when Albemarle acquired Chinese converter Guangxi Tianyuan.
Rival lithium producer Orocobre said last week that shipments of spodumene concentrate from WA’s Mount Cattlin mine scheduled for delivery in December and January were being negotiated at prices around $US1650 per tonne.
That price is well above the $US779 per tonne received by Orocobre in the three months to September and the $US400 per tonne that Australian spodumene concentrate was fetching in September 2020.
While extremely high, the prices Orocobre disclosed for December and January are still short of the $US2500 per tonne price that was implied by an online auction that Pilbara Minerals conducted in September for delivery of a single parcel of spodumene concentrate to Asia in November.
Macquarie analysts had previously modelled that Wodgina would resume production in the 2024 financial year and would not be producing at full speed until 2027.
Mineral Resources sold 60 per cent of Wodgina to Albemarle in 2019 under a deal that gave Mineral Resources a stake in the processing plants Albemarle is building near Bunbury, which will turn spodumene concentrate into battery-grade lithium hydroxide.
Most Australian lithium miners now have exposure to downstream processing plants that add value to the raw materials they mine.
Tianqi and IGO Limited have a lithium hydroxide processing plant at Kwinana that takes spodumene concentrate from Greenbushes, while Wesfarmers plans to do the same on an adjacent Kwinana site to process the spodumene it will soon be mining at Mount Holland.
Pilbara Minerals is expected to update investors on its plan to participate in a battery-grade lithium conversion plant in Korea later this week.
Orocobre has partnered with Toyota on a plant at Naraha in Japan. However, that plant is more focused on the lithium carbonate Orocobre produces in Argentina than the spodumene concentrate it mines in WA.
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