Mining tycoons battle over lithium’s ‘corridor of power’ in Australia – by Nic Fildes and Harry Dempsey (Financial Times – November 26, 2023)

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Local billionaires disrupt consolidation as industry positions itself for boom in mineral vital to electric cars

The vast tracts of desert in Western Australia, which have yielded gold, nickel and iron ore to prospectors in decades past, have now become a major battleground for miners of lithium, a key raw material for batteries as the world transitions to greener energy.

A struggle for control of the resource has been ignited this year as multinational companies have clashed with Australian mining billionaires over a series of takeover attempts in two of the remotest parts of the state.

A section of desert near the mining town of Kalgoorlie in the Goldfields region has become known as the “lithium corridor of power”, while merger moves in the Pilbara in the state’s north-west have triggered memories of the iron ore boom there in the 1960s and Western Australia’s nickel rush in the 1970s.

“These exciting periods don’t come around too often, these prolonged periods of demand for a commodity. It is driving a frenzy,” said Tom Reddicliffe, a 40-year mining veteran and executive director of GreenTech Metals, whose exploration rights in the Pilbara have buoyed its share price amid heightened deal activity.

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