Rio Tinto confirmed that it has made an approach to Arcadium Lithium—a newly formed company from the merger of Allkem and Livent—regarding a potential acquisition of Arcadium Lithium by Rio Tinto. The approach is non-binding and there is no certainty that any transaction will be agreed to or will proceed.

Rio Tinto will not make further comment until or unless an update is appropriate.

Arcadium Lithium is a vertically integrated lithium producer with global scale, geographic reach across a low-cost asset base and a reliable, resilient supply chain. Capabilities across the lithium production process include hard-rock mining, conventional pond based brine extraction, direct lithium brine extraction (DLE) and lithium chemicals manufacturing.

Thus, Arcadium Lithium is both a lithium miner and a processor. Its value-added business model across the entire lithium operations chain enables serving customers with a more resilient supply chain and enhanced operating flexibility and efficiency.

Arcadia Lithium has operating resources in Argentina and Australia and downstream conversion assets in the US, China, Japan and the UK. It also has multiple ongoing development projects in Argentina (greenfield and brownfield) and Canada (greenfield) to increase production capabilities. In the US, it operates the only integrated mine-to-metal production facility in the Western Hemisphere for high purity lithium metal, a core component of next-generation battery technologies.