The POSCO "new brine processing technology" has been in the works since Simbol Materials Inc. that used the same method, namely reverse osmosis.
For over a year and a half, Simbol proved up the process at its demonstration plant in California, and said in mid-January that it had plans to begin construction of a large-scale plant. However, things came to an abrupt halt when the Desert Sun reported that Simbol had fired 38 workers from its demonstration plant at the start of February.
At the time, Simbol CFO Pete Sunada told the publication that the company decided to let of its workers because there wasn't much to do at the demonstration plant — the company's proprietary technology had already been proven. "We've been sort of in a hold mode with the operations," he said. "Basically, the operators were not operating at that time, so we sort of decided that we can't just be throwing money down the drain." - Lithium Investing News 2015-04-27
POSCO as well as Simbol Inc. only have/had a pilot plant to show the feasibility of their process, it was not implemented on production scale brine ponds yet. My belief is that the process still doesn't prove feasible enough in comparison to the common lithium extraction by evaporation of salt brines due to higher energy cost, else it would have been picked up by other producers.
GXY Price at posting:
32.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
