Our Senior Associate of Corporate Finance, Jack Colreavy, discusses Australia's plans to venture into the lithium refinement market. 

Lithium has changed the landscape of zero-carbon renewable energy due to its wide application in current battery technology.  As the largest producer of raw lithium, Australia strives to venture further into lithium refinement and dominate that market.

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Jack Colreavy:

"I think most people would be aware of the gold rush for these new critical minerals related to the energy transition. None more so than lithium, which is a critical element in batteries and there's been a huge global rush for battery electric vehicles in recent years, which has seen the price skyrocket.

Now Australia is the largest producer of lithium in the world, accounting for over half of the annual production. However, most of that gets exported in its raw form to China. To give you some context, in 2022, the average spodumene price was $2,730 a ton that's US dollars, but lithium hydride, which is the refined material sells for $39,900 a ton in 2022, and this forecast for that to increase to over $60,000 a ton in 2023. Now, Australia's leaving a lot of value on the table, which is why the government and other businesses are starting to make a push into refinement. There are currently about five projects in the works for lithium refinement in Australia, and if they follow schedule, we could have 10% of the refinement market by the end of 2024 and up to 20% by 2027. So Australia's making this great big push into lithium refinement, which is going to add a lot of value to our economy. And I think if this blueprint works, we should start to see it for other critical materials, in particular, green steel.

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