A good question was posed by Trachy a while back about the expected costs and revenues for the Taiwan plant. Those numbers are likely very sensitive and unlikely to be shared by AMY at this time.
So here's a simplified look at the costs and revenues of some basic inputs and outputs of the process (namely black mass and lithium carbonate), using industry-availabe data.
Note that this example doesn't consider other costs such as building the Taiwan plant, depreciation, taxes, labour, chemicals required for the leaching process, utilities, etc. So very simplified.
- Annual cost of black mass: $500/MT (
source1) x 2,000 MT/yr plant capacity =
$1.0MM/yr - Li content in black mass: 2-6% by wt (
source2); assume 6% for this example
- Li produced by Taiwan plant (for 100% extraction): 6% x 2,000 MT/yr black mass = 120 MT/yr
- Amount of Li in lithium carbonate: 18% by wt (
source3)
- Lithium carbonate produced by Taiwan plant: 120 MT/yr / 0.18 = 667 MT/yr
- Price of lithium carbonate in 2022: $37,000/MT (
source4)
- Annual revenue from lithium carbonate: $37,000/MT x 667 MT =
$24.8MM/yr One can quickly see from the above that there is a solid financial basis for building the plant.
And don't forget that AMY's process extracts other metals like nickel, cobalt and manganese, all of which can also be solid for additional revenues.
I'd say AMY's future is looking darn good!
EagleNest