Lithium: Birimian Gold – offer of A$107.5m for its Bougouni ‘Golamina’ asset values A$469(US$341) per lithium resource tonne
The offer by Shandong Mingrui Group appears to be bang on the average value for lithium resources which looks like a nice deal for Shandong considering the relatively high grade of Birimian’s Golamina resource at 1.8-2.2% lithium (Li2O) for 229,000t of contained lithium metal. The weighted average on our table of lithium producers is US$350/t though this is skewed by a relatively high valuation for Nemaska Lithium in Canada.
If we strip out the value of Nemaska Lithium then our weighted average value for lithium resources falls to US$260/t of lithium.
We suspect Shandong’s offer is based on the potential for increasing the Golamina lithium resource which is still a bit on the small size compared with others in our peer group.
Elsewhere Albemarle Corp, the US lithium and speciality chemicals group has just completed its acquisition of Jiangli New Materials in China for US$145m. The Jiangli New Material assets are focussed on the production of battery-grade lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate have a total lithium salts capacity of 15,000tpa which Albemarle will raise to 20-25,000tpa.
BGS Price at posting:
37.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
