Sleepy lithium market stirs to life as electric vehicle industry charges up – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – September 21, 2021)

https://financialpost.com/

Less than a week after Vancouver-based Millennial Lithium Corp. asked shareholders to vote on a proposed all-cash buyout by China’s Ganfeng Lithium Corp., a second buyer has emerged and bid 6.1 per cent higher, offering $377 million in cash.

Millennial did not disclose the second buyer’s identity, but a source told the Financial Post it is Chinese battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited, or CATL, as Bloomberg News reported.

The last-minute second suitor for Millennial — a company that is still developing a lithium brine project in the Argentinian desert — offers another sign that the lithium market has shaken off the doldrums of the past few years.

The prices for battery grade lithium have surged dramatically since the start of the year, from around US$5,000 per tonne in December 2020 to around US$20,000 per tonne in September, according to pricing company Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.

For the rest of this article: https://financialpost.com/commodities/energy/electric-vehicles/sleepy-lithium-market-stirs-to-life-as-electric-vehicle-industry-charges-up