Who's selling?, page-77

They may have the finance for their plant but need prices high to service it.
It's a shady world and we would guess funding is Chinese and I can't find published financials.
That usually comes by way of loans from their home province as a result of Chinese stimulus.
CCP lends to the province, they add a margin and on loan to corporations. The amounts available can be staggering. They love foreign investment because all they need do is print of more RMB and convert to AUD or US. They are in a wonderful position because America won't talk about their note printing because they want a high RMB which helps U.S exports.
After conversion foreign investment has few inflationary effects because the new notes are not circulating within China.

During the periods of stimulus I spoke to guys that literally had banks begging them to borrow more. That has all changed in the past year.
The pressure is now on from the CCP for the provinces to shore up those loans and make them actually performing.

However it pans out it's going to be an expensive operation and reliant on Lithium prices staying high and increasing over time. I think they will. The spanner in the works could be someone like PLS supplying other Chinese converters who then undercut Talison's new conversion plant.

The other thing is China itself. I hope no-one thinks that major mining deals are actually private investment without government involvement. If China see's Lithium growth and ev's etc increasing rapidly they could easily back a private takeover of Australia's hard rock.

China likes to control the source and they will often go to any length to do just that.