1. The lithium producers do not tell their selling prices to their products. And most important, the lithium products are very specific in their mineral quality and other contents and impurities. There is not one lithium carbonate, hydroxide or spodumene and petalite. These lithium products should be seen as special chemical products rather than commodities. And every chathode producer and chemical converter of spodumene/petalite requires their own specifications.
In my previous post I put some screenshoots that Prospect uses and updates their pricing forecast from Benchmark Minerals Intelligence and they calculate in their updated DFS with those pricing I have used in my research comparison. The lithium prices have to go up, but for now they are where they are, unfortunatelly.
2. The battery chemical market is expected to grow 10x in the next 10 years. The technical and industrial lithium market is expected to grow at GDP levels.
In 2018 the global lithium market was 276'000 LCE of which 17% (46'500 LCE / 470'000t low iron 4% petalite concentrate).
"... For ceramics especially there is demand for additional low iron petalite as a substitute to other materials. It is likely that market share can be taken from the approximately 15,500 tonnes of lithium carbonate currently consumed in glass and ceramics (equivalent to 157,000 tonnes of petalite)..."
We could take all the 15'500 Lithium Carbonate (equivalent to 157'000t of petalite) out of the glass & ceramics market and replaced it with our preferred ultra low iron petalite. The first step with the 100'000t Sibelco deal is done, we have another 57'000t market + GDP growth in 2019, 2020... with our additional ultra low iron recovered petalite.
You can read those specific informations from the Benchmarks report.
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