Resumen de Evolving global lithium supply
Albemarle Corporation has been the world’s largest producer of lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide for many years, a role that could be consolidated through the agreement reached with the Chilean Economic Development Agency (Corfo) on March 9, 2018.Through this agreement, Corfo authorized Albemarle to increase its production quota for LCE up to 145,000 tpy through to 2043, up from 33,000 tpy of LCE in 2017. Albemarle’s neighbor at the Salar de Atacama in Chile, SQM, is the second largest lithium producer in the world outside of China and so far in 2019, appears to be the lithium producer that could expand its current lithium output the most.Although Corfo authorized the company to increase its lithium production by almost five-fold to 216,000 tpy by 2025, SQM’s current plan is to increase its lithium-carbonate production to 100,000 tpy by 2019 from the current 48,000-tpy level. Lithium hard rock concentrate - less affected by rainfall or snow and able to offer lithium carbonate and hydroxide quality consistency – is also known as spodumene concentrate and has become an important raw material for most Chinese producers while showcasing that lithium hard-rock mines have the capacity to increase production faster than lithium brine operations. Stage 1 of Pilgangoora aims to produce 330,000 tpy of min 6% spodumene concentrate, running from June 2018 to 2020. [...]stage 2 will start commissioning and expansion in the first quarter of 2020 to increase the company’s total output to 850,000 tpy of 6% spodumene concentrate.
