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Wonder if the Chinese man in this photo https://twitter.com/Afritin_Mining/status/1551942561534820353/photo/1
was from BYD....China's largest electric vehicle producer??
Goldman Sachs, meanwhile, expects BYD's share of China's new-energy-vehicle market will rise
from 26% in the first quarter of this year to 36% in 2023 and 45% in 2025. One reason: BYD
designs and produces practically all of its vehicles' most valuable components, including
batteries, motors and some semiconductors like microcontrollers. That has proven to be a huge
advantage in recent years as supply-chain snarls have tripped up competitors, including Tesla,
and gives BYD an edge by allowing it to shorten its product cycles.
BYD is scouting lithium mines to protect itself from surging prices of the essential battery metal.
Despite rapid sales growth, BYD's margins were hammered last year due to high raw material
prices
Burundi he said is only the "cherry on the cake" for RBW. Phal is 8/10 times larger.
News flow will be increasing it sounds like on Phal and Burundi going forwards.
GB seems a safe pair of hands on these projects. Liked the way he said he had projects in other countries on the radar too.
... BMW, Volkswagen, and others. Ganfeng obtains most of its lithium from Mount Marion mine in Australia (which holds the world’s second-largest high-grade lithium concentrate reserves), of which it controls 50%.
The takeaway
The price of lithium — like the price of oil in the 20th century — is likely to keep rising relentlessly, and this will be a key factor in the profitability of China’s battery manufacturers. Lithium (and by implication electric batteries and new energy vehicles) is another key industry (like microprocessors) where China is dependent on supplies from abroad. Yet as with microprocessors, China is scrambling to consolidate its domestic supply.
Large battery producers like CATL and Gotion have the resources to spend whatever is needed to secure their supply.
Over the weekend, the battle for lithium reached new heights. On Saturday, an auction that lasted five days and six nights finally came to an end: A majority stake in a lithium mine in Sichuan province sold for 2 billion yuan ($298.58 million) on JD.com’s ???? auction platform — 596 times the opening price.
The mine in question, located in a nominally Tibetan prefecture in Sichuan, has reserves of around 724,000 tons of lithium.
The buyer seems to have been GCL Energy Technology ??????(??), a developer of clean energy projects such as natural gas and waste incineration, and provider of an electric vehicle battery swap service that allows drivers to exchange drained batteries for charged ones at swapping stations instead of charging.
From May 16 to 21, the auction for the lithium mine attracted 21 bidders who made a total of 3,448 bids, while an online audience of nearly a million people watched proceedings. Based on the successful bid, the purchase price of a single ton of Lithium Carbonate Equivalent (LCE) from the mine, i.e. the first commonly traded lithium intermediate in the value chain, would be about 5,080 yuan ($758). But after adding the transaction commission and debt related to the transaction, the final price of 2.93 billion yuan ($437.41 million) yields a purchase price per ton of lithium of 7,443 yuan ($1,111).
This is significantly higher than other recent lithium mine acquisitions: In May, for example, Gotion High Tech ????, a domestic lithium-ion battery manufacturer, acquired a lithium mine in Jiangxi province for about 1,024 yuan ($152) per ton of LCE.
The context
With the explosion of the new energy vehicle industry, the phenomenal rise in the price of lithium — the price of LCE jumped from 266,000 yuan/ton ($39,580/ton) in January to 466,000 yuan ($69,340) in May — is driven by simple scarcity. The rapid expansion of China’s new energy vehicle industry has made battery companies popular with investors, and these companies — led by CATL ???? with a market capitalization of $145.81 billion — have abundant cash to burn to acquire upstream lithium mines.
In 2020, China was the world’s third-largest producer of lithium at 14,000 metric tons, placing it well behind Australia (40,000 metric tons) and Chile (18,000 metric tons). But China is the world’s largest consumer of lithium, with most of its supply coming from Australia. In the first quarter, however, production at lithium mines in Australia decreased for the second consecutive quarter, and domestic battery manufacturers are scrambling to buy up and develop lithium resources in China, and to develop strong working relationships with lithium mining companies.
Tianqi Lithium ????, for example, supplies LCE to China Aviation Lithium Battery (CALB) ????. Tianqi holds a controlling stake in Chile’s largest lithium producer, Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile (SQM).
Ganfeng Lithium ???? supplies lithium to U.S. new energy vehicle manufacturer Tesla as well as
Lithium producer Albemarle Corp. (ALB) upgrades outlook again. Albemarle Corp is the world’s largest lithium producer and has upgraded its outlook for the second time this month as it expects higher lithium prices and demand to further boost their sales. We have seen many EV companies sell out of some of their electric vehicles, and this highlights the lack of supply in battery metals, which is also pushing up the lithium price. Albemarle Corp, expects sales to now be as high as $6.2 billion this year, up from its previous estimate of up to $5.6 billion.
Musk says Tesla open to acquiring mining company
Peter Wells in New York
Tesla is unlikely to take over another carmaker, Elon Musk said, but buying a mining company was not out of the question.
Responding to an audience question about whether Tesla would use its market cap or other funds to buy a rival, Musk said: “I think it’s unlikely. No.”
Buying a mining company, though, might be a different matter, particularly if it helped Tesla secure easier access to important natural resources.
“That’s not out of the question,” Musk said. “It’s not that we wish to buy mining companies, but if that’s the only way to accelerate the transition” to electric vehicles, then the possibility was on the table.
Such an acquisition would only make sense, though, if Tesla were capable of changing that mining company’s trajectory.
Tesla recently struck a deal with Brazilian miner Vale to buy nickel needed for its batteries.
"However, the increase is starting to unsettle carmakers. Tesla’s Elon Musk recently said lithium had gone to “insane” levels and was now the “fundamental limiting factor” in the growth of electric vehicles. He also said the company might consider mining or refining lithium."
Turning now to tin. After its parabolic run in February, the tin price has slid from a high of around $50,000 in early March to $41,000 today. I still think tin goes to $100,000 before this bull market is over, but a correction is a correction, and this one is consistent with the pullback across pretty much all metals markets.