Aside from having technical problems, most WA SOP projects also had a marketing problem - they just didn’t know it. Are you really going to ship Australian SOP all the way to Europe and hope to compete against K+S in their own back yard. Or ship to North American and compete against Compass? And anyone who thinks they can ship Australian SOP to China and compete against the local production is dreaming.
Most offtake agreements weren’t worth the paper they were written on. Eg. APC signed a contract with Redox to supply 20kt to the Australian market, but Redox have no presence in this market and arguably would have struggled to meet their contractual obligations had APC actually produced.
