No LI panic down underAustralia has long been the resource source for So. Asian nations. The world's largest miner is BHP Billiton which largely mines in A itself. Fad's such as coal, iron ore, cu etc have seen customers push Aussies to get going to ship needed material to them. Invariably these customers
cut back n the size of their orders and businesses slow.
Many of the senior execs at PILBF are former Atlas Iron execs who lived thru the iron ore go go years. PILBF comes close to saying -we don't trust the Chinese. Instead PILBF heaps praise on Korean co and JV partner POSCO.
Here is PILBF'S LATEST PR notice perpetual demand returns in 2022.
Pilbara Minerals moderates production in face of lithium weakness
Pilbara Minerals (ASX:PLS) announced today it produced 14,711 dry metric tonnes (dmt) of spodumene concentrate in the December quarter compared to 21,322 dmt in the September quarter.
The company said it moderated production from the Pilgangoora Lithium-Tantalum Project (Pilgangoora Project) in order to conserve cash and wait for a market recovery.
"The quarter continued to be weak in respect of customer demand for lithium raw materials, impacting both spodumene exports from Western Australia and continuing to reduce pricing across the entire lithium raw materials and chemicals product suite," wrote the company in a news release. "Pilbara Minerals has continued to moderate production in a proactive response to these conditions, thereby reducing costs and using available stocks of ore and final product to support customer sales. Other Australian hard-rock producers have also responded to these soft market conditions by reducing production or placing operations in care and maintenance."
The company said lithium should recover in the medium-term. It pointed to a study by Roskill, which expects the "...lithium market to gain perpetual traction between 2022 and 2023, forecasting demand for lithium compounds to more than double over the next five years."