Falling prices hurting investor appetite and threaten to crush exploration
Miner Paul Cowley decided two years ago to shift his focus to lithium from gold when his company acquired the mineral rights for multiple small claims containing the light metal in central Alberta.
Given lithium’s skyrocketing prices and investors pouring money into companies associated with the metal needed to power electric-vehicle batteries, the chief executive of TSX Venture-listed Indigo Exploration Inc. thought it was the perfect time to make the move.
“There was a lot of excitement,” said Cowley, who has been in the industry for more than four decades. “Everything was there. There was investor interest in our project, we were able to raise money and advance the project up to a certain point.”
Two years on, however, “the wind just died down,” said the former BHP Minerals geologist. His company was affected by the sudden slump in lithium prices, which significantly fell in 2023 after rising manyfold in 2022 as the market swung to a surplus.
For the rest of this article: https://financialpost.com/commodities/mining/lithium-miners-trying-survive-slumping-prices