Making the most of lithium - ABC Perth Podcast....

Making the most of lithium - ABC Perth Podcast.

https://www.abc.net.au/radio/perth/programs/focus/lithium/10617752

Australia's history of primary production has ranged from living off the sheep's back…..to settingourselves up as the world's quarry.

We in Western Australia are incredibly fortunate to be perched on large deposits of valuable minerals which we have dug up and shipped off to other countries and made ourselves a pretty nice living along the way.

But when you hear that the main ingredient in the lithium battery in your phone actually also started its life in the ground here in WA, before being dug up and sent to China for processing; then over to Japan for manufacture before being imported back to us here in Australia at many times its original price, do you wonder if we’re doing as well as we could in making the most of our mineral wealth?

This week the Australian Government asked us to have another look at our much-heralded lithium industry to make sure we extract maximum benefit from our precious minerals, rather than shipping it off to other countries to do the value adding.

So, could WA work towards a thriving industry where we not only dig up the lithium, but also process it? Could we maybe even become a world powerhouse in lithium-ion battery manufacturing?
Warren Pearce, CEO of the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies and Stedman Ellis is interim CEO of the proposed Future Battery Industries Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) joined Jessica Strutt on Focus to discuss the opportunities and challenges of setting up a lithium processing and battery production industry in WA.