Lithium pricing is opaque at the moment. It is pretty obvious there are numerous different prices into and out of China. Those prices are linked to impurities whether people like it or not. Noting hydroxide and carbonate specifications if your 6% spodumene product has excessive impurities in them they affect conversion processes and even the ability to produce hydroxide product - noting these impurities have to be virtually all removed in the carbonate process and even more so in the hydroxide process. Or another way to put it, if your impurities are less than 0.5% Fe203 you are going to get a higher price than those been over 1% Fe203.
The more impurities you have in the 6% spodumene concentrate in the roasting process, you will need to extract these impurities out but you also extract out lithium, a problem in itself. Impurities forms 'clinkers', and then you need to run a process to get the lithium out of the clinkers and you might only get 75% of that from the clinkers, and that affects the recovery of lithium overall in the roasting process and impacts the ability to produce battery grade carbonate. Best explained in this article:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/all-chemical-grade-spodumene-concentrates-same-harman-grant/Now why do I rabbit about above paragraph - the recovery rate in the roasting process is on the basis of a 85% - 90% recovery generally in your 6% grade spodumene in producing lithium carbonate. Now if you are the converter, paying extra costs to remove impurities and then you cannot recover 85% - 90% of the 6% grade spodumene you buy, well obviously you will pay a much lower price for your spodumene purchases than ones where you can recover more of the product and have a lower cost structure for its recovery (i.e. that is why there are so many different spodumene prices around and you need to delve into the composition to work out the differences and at times the data is simply regarded as 'commercial' and not provided hence why the LME wanted to put up an index of an 'appropriate product', one you can then price against etc. This is before we even mention the fact that high impurity spodumene concentrates are not appropriate for the growing hydroxide market.
I went through the impact of impurities (and therefore price and target market) in these posts:
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39683219Finally, I really think there is scope for a number of new entrants into the market anyway - that is existing producers will not fill the void, so this constant debate on my deposit is better than yours is meaningless given there is likely to be more scope than just one new greenfeld producer entering the market:
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39802615Yes I did visit a few alternate stocks and got called a downramper LOL. But here was one of my most recent posts on LTR - if the run of mine is actually below 0.5% Fe203 expect LTR to get a premium price, which I have stated in that thread (i.e. that wasn't a downramping comment in case it doesn't click for you). A key though is getting to the resource which is deep and whether the grade of ore in the MET tests is the grade of ore in the deposit because if it is well the LTR deposit appears good (something I, SFSTH and even
@8horse have acknowledged because I don't suffer a deficiency that is called "
my deposit is better than yours syndrome" and need to constantly be a tool about it LOLin threads I post where I am not a holder).
Here is the posts I put on your LTR stock just for you:
LTR = Post #:
39768313And yes, transport remains the key issue for AVZ - always has as I have said on numerous occasions here. Now in terms of AVZ its good stripping ratio plus its higher grade means that it will have a low mining opex cost, noting transport is a post minesite cost. Then there are tin credits (noting LTR has tantulum credits btw) so ultimately it is about the transport route. No argument there that it is about transport. Post #:
39311143 I'll discuss transport when we work out exactly the road/rail transport options configuration option and length of trucking in that option.
How it plays out is dependent on road km because rail and barge options are likely to be available at production (i.e. therefore distance by road is not as severe as you imply as they are not trucking all the way to the port, which is no different to how tonnes will be transported by PLS to Port, which is by road, and LTR to railhead). I suspect AVZ will commence at a 2 mtpa ore feed operation (producing 400,000 tonnes spodumene per annum, meaning 1 truck movement per hour
one way - i.e. 400,000/45/365/24). Transport options do not stay static and for good measure think about cyclone season and big rains in the Pilbara too - over time transport options arise that can work to the elements and I suspect infrastructure builders understand this concept and that is why iron ore is done by rail in the Pilbara all the way to minesite, because that is what happens over time as production increases to levels that cannot support trucking no more..
Posters here might be wondering why am I linking so many posts - well it is because we constantly go around in circles on this thread. Everyone invested here knows it is about transport, but there is so much misinformation posted around that quality and grade doesn't matter that at times I find I must be living in an alternate universe (one with endless supplies of VB and VB replacing water from the tap LOL).
All IMO
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