Lithium News in Chile

I try to join the dots together to get a better understand of the key events taking place in Chile.Please feel free to add in any missing important events. 

* March2018: Chile’s Molymet and China’s Sichuan FulinIndustrial Group, a joint venture between Samsung SDI Co Ltd and South Korea’sPOSCO approved to make investments of around $754M to produce 58,000 tonnesof cathode per year, the main material in lithium batteries. Corfo signed the agreement with Albemarle to provide as much as 25% of its annual production at adiscount (or “preferential price”) to companies seeking to produce batterymetals within Chile.

* October 2018: The Chilean Nuclear Energy Commission (CCHEN) rejected Albemarle’s March request to increase its quota to sell lithium products by 258,446 tonnes

* November 2018: Chile is taking Albemarle to International Court over lithium prices

* November 2018: The Minister of Mining in Chile instructCodelco to start extracting Lithium

* November 2018: MinRes in $1.58 billion deal tosell half-share in lithium project to Albemarle

* December 2018: MinRes and Albemarle signed the deal

* December (Present): The expansion plan of Albemarle inChile is currently have been frozen. With the absence of Albemarle, China FulinGroup will need to find a replacement to secure their lithium intake. Thisleaves Codelco and LPI in a very strong position.

Keep in mind, Fulin has been indiscussions with LPI before and LPI dropped the court case with Codelco for areason.The recently announce of the Chairman advising “as withall corporate to corporate and corporate to government negotiations, thesethings take time but we anticipate these to be finalised in the first half2019".

In various news release, the current CEO provide some signals thatofftake agreements and financing discussions currently taking place. 

In addition, SQM is also facing water restriction for their expansion so the attention will be shifted to the projects in Marincunga.