Be it gold copper or lithium, a "standard" content and practice...

Be it gold copper or lithium, a "standard" content and practice become a norm between miner and refiner.

The balance is between what the "rough" miner refining process can do to get purity Y located in a dirty mine compared to precision refining to get purity X of a refiner.

For gold miner the standard dore is 80% when sold to a gold refiner, but the dore is actually "around" 80% and the refiner pays exact percentage not 80%.

With lithium purity was set at SC6 when the world was in "glut" and battery Refiners wanted/demanded SC6 and "Rejected" purity below benchmark and bought from someone else. The higher the purity the less "refining" a refiner has to do and SC6 was what aspiring battery lithium miner could do.

Three years ago PLS sc5.5 might have been sold to other users of lithium like ceramics or paint at a discount. Today with under supply Battery processers are more than willing to take SC5.5 at a percentage discount than refining to what whatever purity they need.

How does a standard like SC6 or 80% gold dore comes about..... because there is pracitical maximum purity the "cheaper and limited" miners refining equipment can churn out, without the miner needing to invest in precision process to get to 99% or more ie many miners like SYA is going down this path.

Conversely many refiners can refine SC5.5 even maybe SC4.5 but start going down too far in purity a refiner equipment might not handle the lower purity and start clogging up or other chemical reaction issues occur.