Sayona Quebec restarted North American Lithium\u0027s mine last week and sees a bright future ahead for lithium, a key component in EVs. Read on.
Phillips said he believes North America’s last large scale lithium mines operated in North Carolina and closed in the 1990s, long before the energy transition.
Somewhere in that time period, it may also look to build a conversion plant for its mine in Quebec. Along with a lack of supply, Phillips said that conversion plants could form a second bottleneck that help keep prices elevated for years to come. , a London-based commodity market research firm, projected last week that the lithium market will remain mostly in deficit through at least 2026, keeping prices elevated until then. Between now and 2030, Fastmarkets projects battery electric vehicle markets will experience 20 per cent annual compound growth, underpinning demand for lithium carbonate equivalent, a key metric, that will cause a 10-fold increase in production to 3.5 million tonnes by 2035.
“The Chinese purchasers of have put pressure on spodumene suppliers in order to raise their bottom lines,” the owners wrote in the petition.Photo by Handout/Sayona/AFP via Getty Images Hoffman said the problem was that lithium prices were too high: Because it’s found in countries around the world, higher prices tend to incentivize too much supply, leading to high peaks followed by steep corrections, he said.But he also acknowledged that lithium may be the only mineral that’s an essential ingredient of batteries, and for which there is no obvious alternative.