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BATTERY MINERALS PREVIEW

LME to add much-needed

lithium price clarity

aydirt’s Battery Minerals Conference returns to the Pan Pacific Perth on
P March 4-5. In many ways, it is a strange time for the battery minerals sector.
Prices and interest in most of the battery-related commodities have retracted
after initial excitement. Investors are now cautious about future supply and
demand scenarios for lithium, cobalt, graphite and other related minerals.
Developers are finding it difficult to raise project finance, particularly as marketing
and pricing for the commodities can be unpredictable and opaque.

eanwhile, the world’s major car man- is broken but there were actually some tial investors who keep looking at lithium
Mufacturers are becoming increas- good, speculative reasons why the lithi- investment – both in equities and direct
ingly anxious about future supplies of um and cobalt prices ran when they did project investment,” Lowry said. “Un-
key inputs for EVs. It is estimated that by and they had little to do with longer term certainty over what the lithium price is,
2025 Tesla, Volkswagen and Nissan will battery demand,” he said. “I think they the supply and demand situation and, in
be selling a combined 3 million EVs with totally missed the real growth story for some cases, how fast EVs will grow has
BMW, Ford and others set to follow suit battery minerals; the mega trend is still never been greater.
by the end of the decade. However, most going flat out.” “Lithium is a small market, conflicting
of the battery component parts will come Lithium market expert Joe Lowry of information regarding supply and de-
from Asia, and China in particular, thanks Global Lithium LLC told Paydirt confu- mand as well as price is rampant. Risk
to its dominance of graphite, lithium and sion in the lithium market had grown over is a measure of uncertainty. Until there
cobalt downstream production. the last 12 months. is more certainty regarding EV demand,
Western car manufacturers are re- “I do several calls a month with poten- whether high quality lithium chemical
sponding by heading further upstream in
the supply chain.
“We are working directly with custom-
ers because the big OEMs like to control
their supply chain,” Talga Resources Ltd
managing director Mark Thompson said.
“We continue to meet these companies
and they continue to shock us with their
demand projects; how much they want
and when they want it.”
For Thompson, the investor notion that
the battery minerals boom was a flash-
in-the-pan is misguided.
“As the battery-related commodities
have come off those all-time highs, in-
vestors assume the battery narrative
EV charging stations are sprouting around the world with Europe leading the rate of
Page 28 FeBRUaRY 2020 aUSTRaLIa’S PaYDIRT adoption for the technology