RE:VW 10 Year Lithium SuppliesThanks Rinny. The headline VW buys from China masks much of what is really going on beneath the headline. Gangfeng and Tanqui, two large battery makers in China are sourcing their LI in Australia becuase after much China supplied LI to batteries, the LI available in China to China is of rather poor quality. The big Chinese battery makers properly assessed that that running out phenomenon would happen and years ago plus recently they have been tieing down Aussie Li to supply their needs.
The Aussies on the other hand have been here before with iron ore- they ship it to China and then buy their iron ore back in finished products of steel and stainless steel. Not wanting to be back at that point again, the Aussies in several places are planning to do and doing conversion of LI ore into LI carbonate and LI hydroxide for insertion into batteries. The most recent Aussie firm to announce that it was moving in that direction is PILBF which is exercising an option with POSCO, a Korean steel maker, to own up to 40% of POSCO's conversion operation plus getting exposure to POSCO's LI intellectual property on conversion. As I posted before, PILBF announced it was selling up to 49% of it's PILBARA mine, the day after declaring that it had reached commerical production. Sound like PILBF shares should go up or have gone up ?- wrong. Shorts are continuing to clobber the heck out of PILBF shares. My view as an ex-Wall St guy is that the big Wall St financial people are squeezing the heck out of LI and share prices to steal shares of stock. Once they are sated, they will announce that they are the new big owners, the big movers in the Li and battery industries.
We here are getting slugged share price wise, just as ALTAF and PILBF are getting slugged in Australia. If and when CRE does a deal, our share price will rebound somewhat; but the shorts will keep a cap on the upside. You youngsters are wise to invest using the aggregate demand side numbers and the aggregate supply side numbers for LI. At a point they will come into balance at a higher level and CRE'S share price will reflect that -in my view.
In the meantime, Iike you are, I am anxious for CRE to do a deal on offtake at Rose.