The debate is raging! I don’t think MIN’s Wodgina is anywhere...

The debate is raging!

I don’t think MIN’s Wodgina is anywhere near ready to consider plant, does fjcruiser mean MIN’s interest in Mt Marion or GAM’s tantalum project at Wodgina, because MIN’s Wodgina Lithium Project just released a resource update, ~11Mt Indicated at 1.44% Li2O and ~90Mt at 1.27% Li2O. Most of this is deep and in my opinion MIN is a fair way off from a decision to mine.

My original post was really about supply/demand to 2020, but I agree that know one can predict the uptake of Li-Ion and other Li battery variations, and that by 2020 the demand could be much higher. Bikida mentioned 750kt by 2025. Nevertheless the essence was supply/demand to 2020, if this supply hole is largely filled by the Greenbushes expansion, which is a low cost operation, do the up and coming Li2O concentrate suppliers get pushed back – who knows. And we are just talking about spodumene, what about any new brine projects and brine expansions, and then we have the micas, I agree that the former are capex intensive and have experienced ramp up problems while the latter have yet to prove themselves and probably won’t add too much to Li2O/Li2C03 supply, but they are looking like they maybe super low cost.

On the supply side an interesting statistic to consider for spodumene based Li2O is the current size of the aggregate JORC Resource.

I count 14 ASX and TSX listcos with a spodumene JORC Resources at the moment, they are: AJM:ASX, BGS:ASX, CRE:TSX, EUR:ASX, FL:TSX, GXY:ASX, KDR:ASX, MIN:ASX, NMT:ASX, NMX:TSX, PLS:ASX, PSC:ASX, SYA:ASX. We should also include Talison’s Greenbushes, the latest info for Greenbushes was supplied in 2012 when it was owned by Talison Lithium Limited, but not much would have changed since then, lets say, for argument’s sake, any resource depletion has been offset by resource extensions.

Therefore, I calculate an aggregate JORC Resource of 789Mt, and the contained (or in-situ) Li2O is 11.755Mt with an average grade of ~1.49%. If we convert this to Li2CO3 (multiply Li2O x 2.47282) we get contained Lithium Carbonate of 29.069Mt.

If we include other Li2O sources, AVL:TSX, EMH:ASX, DKO:ASX and GSC:ASX, then the contained Lithium Carbonate increases to 30.326Mt, so in the hard rock space spodumene represents the lions share of contained LCE.

Lets say half of the 30.326Mt Li2CO3 is accessible, this gives us say 15Mt LCE, before we consider the current brine projects and any new hard rock and brine projects and any current project expansions.

If, as Bikida says, demand is 750kt by 2025, this means that the current JORC Resource for the hard rock projects can supply 20 years of demand. This is before we consider technological advances and any new forms of energy storage.

Therefore, with the above in mind, my questions are:

1. What’s this mean for the hard rock projects at the top end of the cost curve, i.e. the more expensive projects from a cash cost (C1) and all in cost (C3) perspective?

1. Are there any emerging hard rock projects which can jump the queue on a C1 and C3 cost basis?, i.e. are there new projects emerging which will just slot in below most of the potential suppliers because they are just cheaper sources of Li2CO3?

1. Have I missed any projects?