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Outlook: Lithium Industry Will Be Pushed in to Oversupply through 2013
22 January 2009
Lithium consultants TRU Group Inc. says that its updated lithium outlook for presentation at the IM Lithium Supply & Markets Conference Santiago 2009 will conclude that the industry is not immune from the global recession and will be pushed into oversupply this year through 2013.
Global use of lithium will decline sharply by at least 6% in 2009 and demand is unlikely to bounce back any time soon as consumers put off buying laptops or cell phones containing lithium batteries.
It is likely now that some expansions and new projects will be delayed or cancelled until market conditions improve. However, new and large uses for lithium will start having a major impact on demand within the five-year horizon: Lithium use in electric vehicle batteries and lithium alloys for aircraft.
TRU forecasts that demand will be strong and sustained in these two segments over the long term 2020. The industry does need at least one of the announced pipeline production projects to come into production and also could do with another new project as the market tightens around 2015-2017.
New lithium producers still will need to be cost-competitive with existing salt lake brine based producers in South America and China. Emerging technology may make some of the undeveloped medium-sized (brine) lithium resources quite attractive. The industry through expansion and development of new resources will have no problem meeting demand, the outlook concludes.
TRU Group Inc., based in Toronto, Canada and Tucson, USA, are industrial management and engineering consultants with a strong capability in lithium project development. The firm is a world leader in resource evaluation, salar exploitation, brine and mineral lithium extraction and processing technologies—those in use, prospective, and leading edge.
TRU has evaluated and modeled most of the known existing lithium properties and advised a number of players on a wide variety of lithium resource, engineering, process, business and investment issues.
The outlook presentation will be posted on the site after the conference on 27 January 2009 at the link trugroup.com/Lithium-Market-Conference.html.
January 22, 2009 in Brief | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBack (0)
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This should end complaints that Li batteries for electric cars will run out the lithium supply ...
Posted by: John Taylor | January 22, 2009 at 09:17 AM
TRU published a study of Overall Lithium supply including operational sites in South America, but including all the other sites including the closed down US sites that were not exhausted, simply made uneconomic by the extremely rich brines in Chile.
Their conclusion was that there was plenty of Lithium for all needs even with a massive conversion to electric cars.
The nice thing is that the US could supply all its own needs and exporta significant amount to the World. The USA could be the Saudi Arabia or at least like Iraq or Iran in an Lithium equivalent to OPEC.
Posted by: Stan Peterson | January 22, 2009 at 09:20 AM
If the price of Lithium were great enough to make it attractive to extract in the US (given the environmental protection based costs + labor costs), then Lithium would probably not be a very attractive component to use for vehicular batteries.
Posted by: Patrick | January 22, 2009 at 10:05 AM
You do realize the entire reason they say this is because the econ is soo crappy that they wont use up the supply for several years... as in this isnt a good thing.
Posted by: wintermane2000 | January 22, 2009 at 10:46 AM
Has anyone seen a report detailing the component cost of raw lithium in standard Li batteries? Just curious as to the impact of Li supply/demand issues on the overall cost of advanced batteries.
Posted by: Justin VP | January 22, 2009 at 11:10 AM
One study says there's plenty of lithium, many other studies say it's impossible to meet world demand if cars go to lithium battery power. Who to believe? If there is going to be an over supply, does that mean the price for an automobile battery pack will come down from $30,000 to something the working man can afford?
Posted by: creativforce | January 22, 2009 at 11:12 AM
The issue is if they need to produce over a certain fairly limited amount the CHEAP lithium sources will be used up and the more expensive ones are alot more spendy. They dont realy know how that will effect things overall.
Posted by: wintermane2000 | January 22, 2009 at 04:32 PM
Creativforce
The problem is that no one really knows what the real reserves of economically recoverable lithium are. Still the increase of production in order to move the battery industry from cell phone and lap top computer to mass PHEV or BEV is a huge. As for oil the problem is more in the production flows more than in the reserves, massive deposits doesn't mean that we can extract large amount fast, That the kind of suttlety than uneducated people like Stan Peterson or Eji are unable to understand.
Posted by: Treehugger | January 22, 2009 at 09:16 PM
Seems like a nice way to position the specialists to buy into Li at the bottom, then ride her on up after the "recession" is over. Li is the 34th most abundant element in the Earth's crust.
Posted by: sulleny | January 23, 2009 at 10:22 AM