On Lithium’s Frontier, Miners Are Betting on a Greener Second Act – by Paul-Alain Hunt (Bloomberg News – April 25, 2024)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — Against the arid, red dirt of the Australian Outback, the Mount Holland lithium mine emerges to approaching visitors as a colossal grey-tinged crater, with trucks the size of houses edging along its steep inclines.

An expanding site at the heart of the world’s top lithium-producing region, the A$2.6 billion ($1.7 billion) operation is emblematic of the plentiful additional supply of the battery material currently weighing on global prices, much of it from this neighborhood. Despite bullish long term forecasts, the metal has been languishing near two-year lows as demand fails to keep pace.

But the sprawling mine is also a glimpse of the future for Western Australia, or of what this vast region, defined for decades by the demands of China’s steel industry, hopes will be a new, greener stage of development. The battery ingredient still makes up a sliver of exports but its prospects have already attracted attention — and billions of dollars of investment — from some of the region’s biggest and brashest mining names, from Gina Rinehart to Chris Ellison’s Mineral Resources Ltd.

For the rest of this article: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/on-lithium-s-frontier-miners-are-betting-on-a-greener-second-act-1.2065365#:~:text=(Bloomberg)%20%2D%2D%20Against%20the%20arid,edging%20along%20its%20steep%20inclines.