August 19, 2025 • 46 mins
With so much unfolding in China across the battery metalsspace, we sat down with YJ Lee at the perfect time.
YJ runs a fund focused on the energy transition and bringsdeep expertise in both metals and battery markets. In this conversation, we dig into China’s policy pivot toward anti-involution and its knock-on effects for lithium and EVs. From there we dive deep into lithium itself – covering the demand and supply outlook, the surge in BESS, why inventories are often misunderstood, and plenty more.
Follow YJ on Twitter: @usuallyYJLee
Recorded 19 August 2025.
TIMESTAMPS
(00:00) Introduction
(02:06) China's Anti-Evolution Policy Impact on Lithium Markets
(04:40) China's Competitive Market Dynamics
(14:20) Licensing in China's Lithium Industry
(20:00) The Growing Demand for EVs
(24:14) Astounding Growth in BESS
(25:17) China's Commercial Battery Economics
(27:37) Solar and Battery Integration
(28:33) LFP Dominance
(29:25) CATL and Sodium-Ion Batteries
(31:36) Lithium Market Dynamics
(40:06) Global EV Adoption Trends
(42:51) Overrated or Underrated: Quick Fire Segment
(45:40) Closing Remarks and Reflections
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
People tend to project in straight lines when real growth
is exponential. What we've seen in the best
market I see forecasts of in 2036100800 GW hours.
Well, guess what, we'll probablyreach there in two years, not
five years. You've.
Been on on many sort of site visits seeing seeing parts of
(00:21):
the world. Well, the only the only
travelling I did recently was toLas Vegas for the Fast Markets
conference. How was that?
Oh, it was pretty awesome my first time in Vegas.
But to be honest I didn't. I didn't really like the
experience. I think it's a different Vegas
from what it used to be. I hear complaints that it's all
rent seeking behaviour there right now and it's really,
(00:43):
really true. Everything costs so much and
they try to charge you for everything.
Really. Yeah, OK.
Yeah, and and the hotel, every single hotel, they charge a
resort fee of something like 45 or 55 USD a night extra on top
of what the hotel already charges.
God, it must be private equity owned or something.
I know who doesn't do that. You should and you should come
with us to the Africa down underconference here in in Perth.
(01:06):
He's the 3rd to the 5th of September like pay to put on a a
banger. There's look, to be honest,
there's probably more gold opportunities, but but Africa a
great, a great, a great producerof of lithium where we're going
to be there and. You run a transition fund as
well YJ and there's plenty of transition critical minerals in
great continent of Africa. I'll tell you what, we could
probably fix you up with a, you know, with a discounted ticket
(01:28):
just for you IJ if you if you agree a couple of months.
And then, and then you're going to drop me in Congo and forget
all about me, you know? A great lithium projects in
Congo mate. Let's not forget about that.
See mate, YJ is coming to Adu Africa down under 3rd to 5th of
September. Get your tickets, they're in the
show notes. You and I are going to be there.
We are, mate. Very excited for this
conference. Big thanks to Peter for putting
(01:48):
this on mate. I think this is going to be the
year that Africa Down Under is. It's it's best year.
It's best year ever after growing massively.
Couldn't said it better myself mate, get your tickets.
Join us and YJ so he doesn't getdropped in the Congo.
Thank you so much, YJ for for for joining us on short notice.
We're trying desperately to understand or wrap our heads
(02:10):
around this anti involution policy, which has, has, has come
out of, of China. It's, it's made a big impact on
the lithium markets already. It's, it's, this is a like a
kind of a big thing that we're trying to wrap our, our heads
around. And we thought we'd, we'd, we'd
speak to you all about what's going on here from, from, you
know, the, the policy front in China, how that's affecting, you
(02:31):
know, the, the mines and the critical minerals supply and,
and why lithium is maybe maybe quite exposed to, you know, this
emerging thematic and policy shift in, in China.
And for the listeners who don't know, this is our YJ Lee who
runs the Arcane, who's a fund manager for Arcane Capital.
And your fund performance is going through the roof, mate.
You would, you would get a date up like 56%.
(02:54):
So phenomenal, phenomenal results.
So congratulations on your tremendous performance so far.
We're glad to have your insightsto to to help us learn about
this. Yeah, hello.
Hi, guys. Yeah, great to be back on your
show. It's been what 9-10 months I
think since our last episode andboy, so much has changed in the
lithium market. I think in the previous episode
(03:15):
we were talking about well, the bottom probably arriving and I
think we are a little bit early on that.
But right now I believe we are past that.
I think the bottom was in June this year and when when spongy
min was about $600 a tonne and carbonate was 8000 and now you
(03:36):
know prices are about 50% higherthan that so.
Sponge means above 1000 bucks a tonne, like in, in the space of,
of two months. It's it's truly remarkable.
You were? Yeah.
I it's, it's amazing, Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean at that point
in time, it didn't look realistic to me, which was we
had a we had a price where 2/3 even up to 2/3 of the producers
(03:57):
in the world don't make money. And that is to me not
sustainable. You know, for an industry that's
growing easily 2530 plus percentper year doesn't make sense that
more than half the suppliers don't make money.
So I think that probably marked the bottom.
And now like you rightly point out, with the policies in China
(04:19):
coming out a bit more in supportof rational market driven
dynamics, that probably signals the bottom of the market.
How do you think about this, this anti involution?
It's like the the buzzword of the month at the moment.
YJ is it? Is it something sort of
dominating your thinking and andthe conversations you're having
as well? No, I, I wouldn't say it's
(04:41):
dominating, but this anti involution thing, let's let's
take a step back and understand how this whole thing comes about
South China. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a
huge market and it is super, super competitive.
It is not the case that, you know, like the portrait in the
(05:02):
West is all centrally planned. It's all government controlled.
Not at all. What happens actually is that
there's a central government layer, yes, which sets the
country policies. And then there are individual
provinces which kind of act likeyour states in the US, right,
who have their own concerns, their own financing, their own
(05:22):
employment numbers to look out for, their own taxes to cover.
And therefore their, their incentives might be different
from that of the national government.
So national government sets the broad country policies.
The local governments have to manage their local employment,
local economies, and then down to the private sector, which
(05:46):
then has many companies that arefighting out in the market, also
fighting out at the same time against some of the state owned
enterprises. So it's, it's, it's an open
marketplace. So I was, I was kind of
describing the, the story of competition in China right now.
That was the backdrop. And what usually happens is that
(06:07):
the government sees a clear direction forward.
For example, 1020 years ago government says batteries, we
are going to be #1 in the world in lithium and batteries.
And that's and that and they setthe long term vision for that.
Before that it was shipbuilding,before that it was steel, you
know. So what happens is that the
government has set this long term vision, then the states,
(06:30):
the provinces execute this in each of their provinces to the
best of their ability and and incentivize companies to start
up. Usually they incentivize this
via tax policies and other other, the usual economy
incentives. Yeah, some subsidies, some tax
policies, etcetera. And that allows many, many
(06:52):
companies to start up and then start competing with each other.
And you know, China is a huge place, so many provinces.
And when and when this happens, what usually happens is that at
the start of any major policy, maybe 50 to 100 companies get
started up competing in this space.
And then by virtue of their competition, the strong survive,
(07:15):
the weak die out. Typical Darwinian marketplace.
Yeah, So and this is and by by doing this, they gain the
skills, they gain the expertise,they gain the market shares and
the winners eventually become the strong companies of the
future, right. But the process of doing this
(07:35):
creates huge competition betweenthe companies in each province
and between the companies at thenational level.
That's why we are seeing today over 50 EV companies in China.
The numbers have dwindled over the last few years, Yes.
But then this is competition to the extent that they're all
(07:57):
trying to survive. And by driving prices down, that
has caused what we we have a joke.
You know, everything that Chinese do that Chinese produce,
they turn it into the price of cabbage.
We call it bite. Yeah, right.
So it goes from steel to ships to now EVs, right?
(08:17):
They're so, so cheap. You can have an EV and wooling
for what, $5000, right. So but this process of bringing
prices down, competing all the way leads to loss making
situations boom and bust cycles over over decades.
And now we are at the bottom of one of these cycles, which is
(08:39):
for lithium and which means thatnobody makes money, but some
players are going to survive andcome out the stronger for it.
And that's that's how it is in the typical Chinese way of doing
things. Yeah.
And, and that, that process, I mean, the, the, the competition
(09:00):
bit kind of makes sense. But one of the realities of the,
the competitive nature is that there are these, these price
wars which you know, might actually in in some ways be a
little bit anti competitive. The, the, the focus on this
supply side policy, anti involution, as I understand it,
it's actually looking to, to refrain from price wars by
reducing supply across, you know, industries being steel,
(09:22):
solar, you know, logistics, evenmedical devices.
That. And, and as a, as a result of
that, there's a, potentially a, a mentality or a, or a cultural
shift towards, you know, higher kind of profitability of the
businesses as a, as opposed to the, the, the, the highly
competitive overcapacity and price wars.
Is that is that like a fair characterization of of your
(09:45):
interpretation or of the policy?Yeah.
But what I'm yes, they are trying to do this.
But what I think that this may not be as successful as we think
it's going to be because this ispure market economics.
Price wars making short term losses for long term gain is
(10:05):
nothing new. Every economy goes through this.
We've seen, we've seen price wars happen in in Western
countries, in industries in the West as well.
So it does not mean that this isnative to China.
In fact, what happened with the solar industry like you
mentioned a few years ago in theduring the Green New Deal
(10:29):
periods, the solar companies were making so much money, they
are all cashed up. The big ones have billions of
yuan in, in, in the bank. They can, they can wait this
out. They can, they can make short
term losses. They're going to lose half, half
that stash, but they're going tocome out with capacities double
treble what they were five yearsago.
So and that drives down their costs in the longer term.
(10:53):
So I don't see this anti evolution policy immediately
succeeding because it is difficult.
You are fighting market pressures.
What I mean to say is that it isnatural for for many companies
in an industry to compete on prices, drive prices even below
(11:16):
costs for the short term so thatthat's to win the long term
game. And no government policy can
stamp this out immediately to the extent that yes, they might
be able to target specific players that run at a loss so
that they can subsidise them their operations in other ways.
I.e CATL, yeah, that could be successful, but industry wide, I
(11:41):
don't think it will work for thesolar industry and I don't think
it will work for the lithium industry.
Why, Jim, I'm curious to just hear a couple of thoughts on, on
why this has all kind of come about because there is a bit of
a notion that this came about from a cultural type push.
And it's the the government responding to that and that sort
of dynamic through the major cities and the the cost of
(12:03):
property rising so much and you know, salaries being so
competitive and these sorts of things.
Do do you say that? Is that how you've sort of
inferred this involution or antiinvolution policy setting coming
about? It's a little bit too early to
make firm judgements on this policy.
I think where it's coming from, yes, to some extent they do see
(12:26):
that this competition has gone alittle bit out of hand and it's
causing, it's causing kind of how, how do I say it's, it's,
it's, it's a bit of a downer in terms of the national mentality.
You know, when everybody fights it out so much that nobody makes
(12:47):
any money and everybody suffers for it, it's not a great place
to be. So I think they are trying to
change the culture a little bit towards more healthy to set the
tone for a more healthy expectation of future market
conditions. But I don't know whether that's
going to work. Yeah, yeah.
(13:07):
And a lot of the the people we've sort of spoken with have
made the comparison to the supply side reform one point O
sort of call it in the 2015 sixteen period.
How do you sort of compare and contrast the differences now is,
is that a comparison you you kind of jump at or do you think
we're in a kind of unique situation here?
(13:30):
I mean, history rhymes, right? But never repeats itself.
Back then it was mostly competition at the large SOE
level. Right now China has become very,
very much a market private, mostof the market power, a lot of
market power has shifted over tothe private companies,
(13:50):
especially in the lithium space,should I say.
And it's, I think it's harder to, you know, actually make
changes the way they want, what they want to change because, you
know, it's not a, it's not a SOEthat you have direct control
(14:12):
into. These are private businesses,
right? So, yeah, if you're trying to
have a supply side policy that is, is targeting the private
businesses, one mechanism to to to have some input there from,
you know, from, from the government level would
presumably be through these thislicensing mechanism.
And this is this is the, the part of the news flow that has,
has, has really kind of rippled through the lithium equities in
(14:33):
the last couple of weeks. And it's, it's it's in relation
to, you know, China's governmentrevising the Mineral Resources
Law and the legislation which outlines that mine registrations
and approvals are now down to the Ministry of Natural
Resources. And that also means that the
local governments can no longer license operations without
authorization from the ministry.We we kind of we we saw this a
(14:57):
little bit ripple through with with notably the junk she
cattle's mind, the Lipidala mindthere.
I think, you know, it's also goes by the name 414 as well.
How did you interpret that, You know, series of events as it
ties into this, you know this this policy as well?
I see it in terms of economic incentive.
So when lithium prices was superhigh and lipidolite started
(15:22):
coming onto the scene in 2122, then the government had no issue
with these mines coming online through whichever loopholes.
You know, a Cow Lane granite mine coming online to produce
lipidolite, right as maybe the byproduct in a way that they
don't like being a byproduct, but it actually was the main
(15:44):
economic product of the mine, therefore feeding into the
supply chains and bringing down the lithium prices so that the
battery guys and the EV guys have can survive and and
dominate the industry for the future.
Yes, that's in line with the national policy and therefore
it's allowed. Now prices have dropped so much
(16:06):
that it's that other things become more important, right?
Pollution, for example, lapidolite is highly, highly
pollutive, toxic even to refine.And then you the amount of oil
you have to booth is simply ridiculous to produce a tonne of
lithium carbonate from that Jiangxi mine, the Jiangxia war
(16:28):
mine that CATL runs, it's a very, very low grade mine.
The grade is .28% and it's lipidoli.
You need to basically at such low grades, you need to move
what, 350 tonnes of ore to produce a single tonne of LC.
Makes no sense, right? And if you want to scale this
up, some people say the, the, the capacity of this mine is
(16:49):
100,000 tonnes per year. I don't think it's that at the
moment, but that is the, that isthe longer aim.
I think. Do the math.
You need to move 35,000,000 tonnes of ore to produce that
amount of LC before refining losses.
It's. Remarkable here.
So maybe you need to produce 50.Yeah.
(17:10):
So it's crazy. I don't think they have a
35,000,000 ton operation there. And the amount of pollution that
will create will be the same. So now I think other things
become more important. Cheap raw materials can be
bought in the open market from Africa, from all over the world.
Now that now, then the local pollution issues start coming
(17:31):
up. This this one mine, the junction
like junction was junction mine that was operating under a under
a Kalin license. Like it was the categorization
was a, you know, a Kalin, A Kalin mine, but that were
obviously not producing very much Kalin or any I think.
So it was the wrong characterization.
So the, the, the thing that they've kind of been like picked
(17:53):
up on under this new, new policyor enforcement of policy is to
get that, that licensing like tobe appropriate.
There's a different royalty ratebetween the Kalin mines and, and
a little bit of like mine, as I understand as well.
So it's kind of like a, a highercross cross, like a higher cost
structure to, to, to change it. And then within that same
province, there's like there's six or eight other other mines,
(18:14):
smaller scale, which, which haveto get their own, like their own
licensing changed or September when they're, they're kind of
they're, they're they're set to lapse.
Is that all accurate? Like, and do you see risk to
them being like being being shutdown as well or like, like
what's your interpretation of that?
To be honest, I don't think anybody knows for sure.
(18:35):
It's too vague in a moment. Nobody really knows unless
you're like super super insider.Gotcha.
So these are the rumours that are swirling around in the
lithium lithium WhatsApp group chat, so.
Yeah. But I mean, I mean, let's look
at a, let's look at a bigger picture, right?
We don't need to get into too much of the nitty gritty.
It doesn't matter what the slightly different royalties for
(18:56):
different minerals, etcetera arethere.
Let's look at the bigger picture.
Catl's mine gets taken out for minimally 3 months, right?
Maybe even six months. That takes maybe about 20-30, at
least 15 to 30 kilotons of LC out of the market.
If the other mines get taken outfor a couple of months as well,
then that's that much supply outof the market.
(19:18):
But the big picture is that the lithium market last year was 1.2
million tonnes. LC this year is probably going
to be 1.5 to 1.6. I think 1.6.
Other people more conservative than 1.5.
But the bottom line is that demand is growing 25 to 33% this
year every three months that themarket, every three months the
(19:41):
demand is growing at maybe 6% or7%, right.
So think of it this way. Every three months the the world
needs to bring a new TNTR wall, a new CNTR Lipido like mine to
the market to meet the incremental demand growth.
Is that going to happen? I suppose when you pave it like
that, you're getting in the nitty gritty of the smaller
(20:03):
supply stuff. Is, is is like less like a less
pertinent part of the equation when you think of the supply
demand and, and you've you've been like constant on this point
YJ for a long time that the likeconsensus is massively
underestimating demand here. And yeah, I'm keen to just like,
peel out what? Like why, Why consensus is so
wrong. Sometimes they are looking at
(20:27):
the narrative, the, the, the story out there is that low
prices means means that demand is not catching up to supply,
Therefore demand must be slow. But that's what that's how the
the news agencies tend to portray this picture.
But the fact is that go back to economics, right?
(20:47):
Basic economics and your demand curve price quantity.
The lower the price, the larger the quantity demanded.
Translate it into real world terms, the cheaper your car, the
more people switch to this cheaper model right?
And now we now we see with low battery prices cars E VS getting
cheaper than petrol vehicles, getting cheaper than diesel
(21:08):
vehicles. Heavy used vehicles are are
switching over very, very quickly because the ROI on these
electric vehicles is so much higher.
Now. One of the things that I've been
looking at very, very closely, which I think analysts or
consensus hasn't really focused on is electric trucks.
This is huge. This is a huge market in China.
(21:31):
They sell about last year, the heavy electric trucks in China
sold about 75,000 units. This year they are on track for
160,000 units over 100% growth year on year.
Each of these heavy trucks has abattery 10 times the size of a
of a passenger car. And these trucks are going
everywhere in mining, in hauling.
(21:53):
You know, you even see China travelling autonomous trucking
in China already. So I think that the demand for
lithium is a lot higher now thatprices are low, which is which I
think is in line with economic theory.
I don't understand why analysts have a car demand growing in the
(22:14):
teens this year. Makes no sense.
So demand is going to grow gangbusters, right?
What does that sort of make you think?
If demand grows gangbusters, we know more supply needs to come
online and the supply is going to come online naturally faster
from the existing mines that arein production and can expand.
And when I think of that matter,think of Lion Town.
(22:34):
Obviously they revise their their ability to produce to to
2.8 million tons per annum that they're currently like, like
their mining rate is. But we know that that can be
like 4 million tons per annum pretty quickly, which means more
and more tons coming from underground, which means more
ground support. Is all ground support required
to enable the more mining comingfrom underground?
(22:54):
And why not use the best in the business when it comes to ground
support, Sandvik ground support?Sandvik ground support, they're
the only, the only name you needto know when it comes to ground
support, mate, because it can come to your mind in a jiffy
like that because there's distribution hubs all over the
world. They've got a team that cares
about it and they they provide tailored service, great
feedback, great people to order from great people to, to ensure
that the product is on spec and it is delivering the results
(23:16):
they need. Great, great, great person.
And Derek, Kurt A. 100%, mate. And just like the lithium market
growing gangbusters, these guys are improving year after year
after year. Mate, ground support is not
something that just needs to be sort of left in the corner.
It gets better by the day. You know what the tagline is
mate? Keeping people safe.
Keeping people safe, call Sandvik ground support one of
(23:37):
the pushbacks that a lot of people have.
And I'm really curious to hear your thoughts on why J is that a
lot of this has been subsidy LED, government incentives, tax
credits, these sorts of things, and maybe we've seen some of
them sort of peel off. How do you kind of respond to
the narrative that it's only been propped up by governments
thus far? We've seen subsidies fall off in
(23:57):
many, many economies and doesn'taffect, doesn't affect the rate
of change of EV adoption goes uptowards China is now at 50 over
percent and subsidies have been falling off year on year.
And the, the best component, thestationary storage like the, the
(24:18):
growth there has been, I think it's sort of safe to say it's
been astounding and, and underrated as well.
And I remember when we spoke a number of months ago, you were
pretty, you're pretty bullish on, on this part of the market.
I'd, I'd love to sort of get your reflections on how that's
grown versus what you, what you had thought back then and where
you see that kind of evolving. Well, actually I kind of raised
(24:41):
my best forecasts I think from 10 months ago.
I didn't, I didn't go back to check the previous numbers, but
I think they're higher now. I think by 20-30 we reach a 1.5
terawatt hour market from 200, just over 200 GW hours last
year. I think this year we are
slightly over 300. That's kind of in line with row
motions estimate as well, I think.
(25:02):
And why this is happening is because two things.
One, batteries have become so cheap that the payback period on
most grade level best is now five to seven years.
And that's great economics, right?
And in China, commercial best has now payback periods of one
to two years. I'm not kidding you.
(25:24):
I learnt this from the Fastmarkets analyst.
Credit to him, Chinese guy. After his presentation at the
Fastmarkets conference, I had tochat with him and he told me
this. What's happening in China is
that for the commercial guys, they are actually, when I say
commercial best, I mean smaller scale, privately owned best
systems, right? And what they do is that they
(25:46):
charge midday when of course prices are pretty much negative
and they discharge into the evening peak, which is the usual
best operation, right? But then they also charge
midnight and discharge early morning peak.
And that means that they use their asset twice a day, not
just once, and that drives the yield of the asset and therefore
(26:11):
the payment period becomes one to two years.
With that kind of economics, people sure as hell are putting
in tons of best into the market wherever they can.
I've not met a single best manufacturer that says that they
are short on demand. Yeah, that's, that's
fascinating. And this, this part of the
market is 1 where we've seen like a huge discrepancy with
the, with the people we've sort of spoken with and what their
(26:31):
growth assumptions are versus consensus broker.
Like a sort of factor of 2X. Like some of the, the feedback
we've gotten is that they think this part of the market is twice
as big as what a, a heap of brokers out on, on the street
have have written it up to be. Is, is that the sort of like
thinking you've got as well thatthe, the consensus in in Wall
(26:52):
Street or whoever you sort of think about there is way below
where it's actually at? People are projecting like as
opposed to observing actual installation rates.
They're they're they're they're they're projecting, you know the
the wrong numbers. Yeah, of course.
I mean, it's, it's the typical thing, right?
People tend to project in straight lines when real growth
(27:14):
is exponential. What we've seen in the best
market I see forecasts of in 2036100800 GW hours.
Well, guess what, we'll probablyreach there in two years, you
know, not five years. And the same forecast error
happens in solar. I mean, go back, go back to, and
(27:34):
that's the other part of the best equation that I forgot to
mention. Solar go back to the world
energy outlook for the last 10 years.
All right, they are, their forecasts are always off by a
factor of about 3-3 years ago they said that last year's solar
installations were going to be 200 gigawatts.
No, it was 600. And to the extent that they're
(27:57):
all forecasting linearly, the real growth has been vertical.
And now that drives the entire best market.
So much solar is being put in the world today.
A lot of markets experience negative electricity pricing
during the midday. You cannot install new solar
without new, without pairing them with batteries anymore.
(28:19):
And just in time, battery priceshave come down so much that
solar plus batteries now are even cheaper on a kilowatt
basis, kWh basis than coal or gas.
So it all makes sense now. And and if we touch on the, the
chemistry that's that's really dominating in that part of the
market, LFP, is there, is there any competition in, in your mind
(28:42):
there? No, no competition there.
LFP is cheaper. It's got more charge cycles than
NMC. Grade batteries don't really
need the the incremental increase in energy density that
NMC delivers. You don't need, you don't need a
battery to be able to provide a higher faster acceleration for
your for your car because grade batteries don't move.
(29:05):
So yeah, LFPS are are the are the chemistry of choice for
best. Very while we're on the the, the
chemistry pace, Raja, I'd love to get your observations on like
in the lead up to, to cattles like IPO the the potential, like
the potential, any observations on like cattle's discourse to
(29:26):
the market being talking up sodium ion and then sort of
subsequent and, and, and, and maybe maybe, you know, ensuring
that there was an oversupply of production in the market via
their, their, their own mind, which if you, if you just take
it on face value, the mind is uneconomic.
However, cattle is making money on having lithium price be low
when their margin is, is, is incremental there.
(29:47):
Do you, do you see any like, like are you part of the cohort
that thinks that like maybe maybe cattle was was being a
little bit disingenuous in, in their, in the way that they were
talking about sodium mine and also in, in their in, in, in
this in the supply and margin kind of component of that
market? To be honest, not really.
I mean, I don't, I don't subscribe to every single
(30:09):
conspiracy theory. Not everyone, not.
Everyone someone named me, I mean, to the extent I think keto
is did run the the mind to influence lithium prices
globally. I think that's true.
But the sodium ion battery side,I mean, I'll give them to be
honest, if I will keto, I will probably develop sodium ion
batteries as well. Because you're, you're a large
(30:31):
battery company. You can never say, you know,
five years or 10 years down the road which chemistry is going to
become dominant. You have to play every,
everything and you have the resources to develop everything
and see what works right. And if our view of the lithium
market is right, that best electric trucks, cars, the
(30:54):
demand grows so quickly that lithium cannot, that there's not
enough lithium in 2020, even 2026 onwards to meet demand to
2030. Then something has to come in
and pick up the slack. And the only something out there
right now really is sodium. Yeah.
So I think that could be a use case for sodium to pick up some
(31:16):
of the demand that cannot be metvia lithium batteries for, for
example, Best. Yes, a sodium battery setup will
require about three times the land footprint compared to LFPS.
But if you're putting Best out in the desert, yeah, I mean, you
can use three times the space. It doesn't matter.
(31:36):
So if, if we focus on the ramifications like we sort of
touched on the, the price response has been pretty, pretty
quick in, in the scheme of things.
But I think it's fair to say it's not in the interest of the
the Chinese government to see lithium prices run away to
levels they they got to sort of last time.
So how do you think about that dynamic?
(31:58):
I know that already sort of whata bit of a bit of sort of
influence in the amount of speculation that could take
place with regard to to futures pricing and these sorts of
things. Do you do you think there's a
big role that they're sort of playing behind the scenes in
where the lithium price sort of settles?
(32:19):
Honestly, no, I don't think theyare trying to guide the
government on a on a national government level basis.
I don't think they're trying to guide the price of lithium per
SE. It's a very, very small market.
And to be honest, if you look atlithium as a percentage of costs
these days, given a huge scale of manufacturing, the raw
(32:41):
material isn't, yes, it's a significant, it's some part of
the bill of materials, but it's no longer as large as as they
used to be. Now manufacturing scale has kind
of driven production costs down in a in a very big way.
So even even if lithium prices were to double from where they
are today, go from 10/10/12 thousand to 2010, 2020, 4000 per
(33:03):
tonne, LCEI think the battery market could absorb that.
CATL and BYOD have I, I think have no real issues raising
prices by a little bit to cover this cost and then everybody can
and then there'll be a healthy and incentive pricing in the
market to incentivize new supplyto come online.
(33:24):
Otherwise we go into a deficit much, much quicker than people
think. So, so if we sort of reflect on
that point the the potential supply response, obviously
through 22 into 23, we saw a magnificent supply response from
an incredible run up in the price.
And this sort of supply came from pockets where people didn't
think it might otherwise sort ofcome or it came on quicker from
(33:46):
parts, say Africa and Zimbabwe. Another sort of it would, are
there regions that you think might be able to sort of click
on supply or existing mines thatmight expand supply that you're
sort of keeping a keen eye on toto sort of see that this price
level maintains? Well, we are running out of
continents to be surprised from,right?
(34:06):
I mean, the only one is Antarctica, isn't it?
Yeah, but I mean. By two weeks from the sea floor,
mate. Well, that's that's nickel van.
People are trying that. I don't know how well that's
going to go, but. Well, that's not going there.
Yeah, yeah. But yeah, it was a small market.
(34:27):
2022 was a very small lithium market.
It was what I think if I recall correctly, an 800K ton market in
total, nothing compared to iron ore, copper, etcetera, Tiny,
tiny metal market. We are still tiny, we're still
small, but it's a lot. It's a lot bigger than before.
This year if we are 1.6 million tonnes, that's double the size,
the market size has doubled. It will not be so easy to
(34:49):
influence the price either way from here going forward.
The larger the market gets, the more supply you have to bring
online to the market to crash the price.
So in next year, we are probablyin a 2 million tonne LCE market.
You would have, if you bring on an additional 100K tonnes like
what happened from Africa three years ago, now you're now you're
(35:12):
influencing the market by 5% instead of the 16% that they
used to be. And it is not difficult, sorry,
it is not easy to bring 100K tonnes of supply to the market
quickly. How they did it in Africa was
literally they went to all the outcrops they could see and just
started digging. No mine plans, no very, very few
(35:35):
approvals. Just went in, started digging
and go. Same thing happened in Jiangxi.
We had school children. Unfortunately the economy
incentives were there. Go out into, you know, pick up
rocks, stuff it into rice sacks,load it into the back of the
truck, send it to the refiner. That's what happened.
But I don't think it is easy to influence the market in a 2 to
(36:00):
3,000,000 tonne market. I, I suppose, I suppose like
what we're trying to figure out is so we've had some, some
supply out of the market. You pave the picture that demand
is much like much higher and growing much faster than most
the market is expecting. A lot of the, the people who are
more, have a more moderate outlook for lithium in, in the
(36:20):
short term. They point to, you know,
inventories are still very high,but they're probably not
focusing on the fact that inventory days is at a local low
because the market's much bigger.
Now. Is the market tight enough in
your opinion? Like have we like is the market
so tight that we're going to seethey're pretty pronounced move
forward and upward in the price in your expectation?
Like is, are we, are we at that moment right now?
Is this, is this a trend that's going to continue or are we kind
(36:40):
of just going to like moderate around, you know, 1000 bucks a
tonne AC6? I I think you're exactly right
that people are focusing on the wrong inventory numbers,
absolute inventory levels. Yeah, they matter, but it's the
days in, in usage that really, really matters.
In a market that's growing 30% ayear, you need 30% more
(37:03):
inventory every single year. So that number has to go up.
And you're also right that it's,it's I think it's tightening in
the sense that we've not seen rejections of shipments like we
saw in the last cycle. So in the 2020 lithium up, was
(37:24):
it 2020 or 18 in the previous lithium boom, boom and crash
during the crash shipments were being rejected right from from
Australian producers. We don't see that in this
market. So something is going on.
We've heard that too. We've heard that too.
There's been no observation of any, any cargoes, yeah, like
being, being being pushed back or delayed or anything like
(37:46):
that, like it's been seen. There must be speaking with the
same people. YJ Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. So I mean to the extent that and
and it's, and it's very weird. I'm even hearing stories of low
grade, even lepidolite being refined together or or blended
into with sport, you mean. And honestly, I have no idea how
the how this technical, the technical process of this would
(38:07):
work because it to my understanding it's kind of
different processes. But yeah, I think we've got to a
point where people are realisingthe market is probably a little
bit tighter than they think. I don't want to make any
speculation on prices where theygo in the short term because
price forecasts I think are inevitably wrong.
(38:30):
But we just need to step back, take a look at the big picture
thing of incentive pricing and whether or not we are there yet.
Right now $1000 barely covers costs for Western Australian
players, Some of them. So if you want the supply to
continue producing for the next three years, it has to be here
or higher. Does $1000 incentivize new for
(38:53):
spodumene? Incentivize new supply to come
online? Barely. 12,000 LC.
Is it enough for a new brine to come online or new clay or DLEI?
Don't think so. So we're not there yet.
It's, it's simple when you just think of it in the with your
(39:15):
outlook and if you're, if you have the same expectations on
demand growth that you have. Yeah, we, we, we're, we're
pretty reflective of this momentas a, as a result of what, you
know, could, could be a substantial policy shift
combined with, you know, demand and market tightness all at the
same time. Like what do you think?
Like we, and also maybe our listeners should be, should be
(39:36):
paying more and more attention to.
The fact, the fact is that supply growth is all baked in
all right. People are producing, are
developing mines from the same places where they know that
that's been a a deposit for the last 1020 years.
So to me, supply is no longer surprising.
(40:00):
Demand is where people should spend all their time analysing
and comparing versus forecasts. I think EV adoption is growing
even faster than people think. Yes, the US is slow and the US
media dominates headlines. You know, it it articles coming
out of the US that say, oh, EV sales are slowing makes no
(40:21):
sense, right? It's growing, it's accelerating
in China, it's accelerating in. Even, shall we say less
developed economies, they are literally skipping the petrol
age. They don't want cars.
They don't want petrol cars anymore.
They are going straight for EVs.BYD is sending their 7000 car
(40:44):
car car carrier ships everywherearound the world.
That ship has gone to those ships now.
Now they have a fleet. Those ships have gone to
Germany, they have gone up northto my neighbor Malaysia, they
have come to Singapore, Right. So EVs are being exported all
around the world from China now.And I think everybody should
(41:06):
focus their attention on demand.It's growing so much faster.
Just look out for the confirmingdata.
That's a, that's a really interesting perspective, YJ
because the, the classical capital market capital cycle
investor would always sort of betaught to focus on supply
(41:27):
because supply is in a sense easier to determine because the
speed at which you can turn a mine on takes time.
And then you can, it would just sort of base from there.
Whereas the demand side needs you in a sense to understand
human psychology and these sortsof things.
But but you sort of come at it from the perspective of there's
enough confirming data. If if you look backwards, which
(41:48):
people aren't doing to, to give you that confidence to look
forward across all the sections of the market, whether it's a VS
stationary storage and sort of see that this, this is a real
sort of trend that's going to continue.
Well, well, mate, I literally have a degree in economics.
And one thing that we actually do see in economics is that
(42:08):
demand creates its own supply. Yeah, yeah.
Lower prices like to more demandthe the demand.
It's not just about lower prices, right?
I mean, if it's a very real thing, if human.
The reflexivity of yeah, yeah, the network.
Effects that come from I mean. More and more correct.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not that supply creates
demand. I mean, if you have a supply of
(42:29):
something, you still have to convince people to want it.
And then the more they want it now, then your supply becomes
valued. If you have.
Yeah, if there's something that is not demand in demand, then
you're never going to get a price for it.
But if there's a demand for something, it will drive, it
will change the market to createsupply.
So demand creates its own supply.
(42:51):
I love that point. YJ I'd, I'd, we'd love to, to
give you a bit of an overrated, underrated, quick, quick fire,
quick, quick, quick, quick, quick fire segment.
If you're, if you're open mindedand willing to give us your,
your salient views on on, you know, hopefully I've got like 10
things written down here that I'd love your overrated
underrated. I think we can add a couple as
(43:12):
well. Yeah, the the couple ideas we
will. The first one's very easy
because we know what your response is.
ESS overrated. Underrated.
Not not loved enough, but. Yes, massively underrated is the
the response. Yeah.
It's not overrated, underrated, but it's one of the other.
BYD or Tesla as an electric vehicle maker?
(43:33):
Have you got a preference? BYD.
Yeah, undeveloped Western Australian spodumene projects.
Overrated or underrated? Wow, sorry, Broad.
That's a broad, broad range, man.
I know, I know, I said. Undeveloped.
Undeveloped. There are not many big deposits
(43:56):
left. Mostly overrated, sorry.
We might have asked you this onelast time, but worth getting
another take the the future prospects of DLE.
I recently became a little bit more convinced that DLE could
work, but at the same time it isnot easy to transplant to other
(44:17):
brine fields. Therefore probably still mostly
overrated in in most people's minds.
I don't think that much DLE supply comes online in the near
term. Brazilian Spodumene.
Resilience. Spodumene Brazilian.
Brazilian. Brazilian.
Oh yeah, low cost supply will continue to produce for a long,
(44:39):
long time. Underrated.
Yeah. Albemarle.
Broad, broad question. Nah, neither overrated nor
underrated. It's it's imbalance.
Hong Kong listed lithium producers.
(45:00):
Underrated. Yeah.
How about investing in Chile forfor lithium production?
You really want to get into thatall.
You have to say is overrated consolidation probability of
(45:22):
Chinese downstream. Low.
Yeah. This one's sort of slightly
adjacent, but I know you've you've covered it in the past.
Overrated or underrated Silver? Ah, still underrated.
Beautiful YJ I've got, I've got none, none left, but all I've
(45:43):
got is just appreciation for your insights and you're making
the time to give give you a salient use an analysis.
It's refreshing, it's compelling, it's course for us
to to evaluate our own assumptions in a, in a market
that's clearly growing rapidly. And yeah, congratulations on
your awesome performance so far.And and we hope you will come
back and and join us in the future as as the market
(46:05):
continues to to develop here. Oh, yeah, definitely.
Thank you guys again for the opportunity to be on your show.
Just happy that, yeah, now at least we have a bit of a track
record to show potential investors.
And I hope that you know this, this gets our, you know, our
name out there a little bit more.
Thank you. Absolutely great to chat again
(46:25):
YJ, thank you. Thank you.
Super Insights. Super Insights makes me reflect
a lot yeah. Big big big fan of IJ Big fan of
our partners which make our production possible.
Big thanks to them A. 100% Axis mineral Services, Sandy Ground
support Africa down under and focus by market Tech mate.
Uduru. Uduru.
(46:46):
Now remember, I'm an idiot. JD's an idiot.
If you thought. Any of this was anything other
than entertainment. You're an idiot and you need to
read out a disclaimer.
People tend to project in straight lines when real growth
is exponential. What we've seen in the best
market I see forecasts of in 2036100800 GW hours.
Well, guess what, we'll probablyreach there in two years, not
five years. You've.
Been on on many sort of site visits seeing seeing parts of
(00:21):
the world. Well, the only the only
travelling I did recently was toLas Vegas for the Fast Markets
conference. How was that?
Oh, it was pretty awesome my first time in Vegas.
But to be honest I didn't. I didn't really like the
experience. I think it's a different Vegas
from what it used to be. I hear complaints that it's all
rent seeking behaviour there right now and it's really,
(00:43):
really true. Everything costs so much and
they try to charge you for everything.
Really. Yeah, OK.
Yeah, and and the hotel, every single hotel, they charge a
resort fee of something like 45 or 55 USD a night extra on top
of what the hotel already charges.
God, it must be private equity owned or something.
I know who doesn't do that. You should and you should come
with us to the Africa down underconference here in in Perth.
(01:06):
He's the 3rd to the 5th of September like pay to put on a a
banger. There's look, to be honest,
there's probably more gold opportunities, but but Africa a
great, a great, a great producerof of lithium where we're going
to be there and. You run a transition fund as
well YJ and there's plenty of transition critical minerals in
great continent of Africa. I'll tell you what, we could
probably fix you up with a, you know, with a discounted ticket
(01:28):
just for you IJ if you if you agree a couple of months.
And then, and then you're going to drop me in Congo and forget
all about me, you know? A great lithium projects in
Congo mate. Let's not forget about that.
See mate, YJ is coming to Adu Africa down under 3rd to 5th of
September. Get your tickets, they're in the
show notes. You and I are going to be there.
We are, mate. Very excited for this
conference. Big thanks to Peter for putting
(01:48):
this on mate. I think this is going to be the
year that Africa Down Under is. It's it's best year.
It's best year ever after growing massively.
Couldn't said it better myself mate, get your tickets.
Join us and YJ so he doesn't getdropped in the Congo.
Thank you so much, YJ for for for joining us on short notice.
We're trying desperately to understand or wrap our heads
(02:10):
around this anti involution policy, which has, has, has come
out of, of China. It's, it's made a big impact on
the lithium markets already. It's, it's, this is a like a
kind of a big thing that we're trying to wrap our, our heads
around. And we thought we'd, we'd, we'd
speak to you all about what's going on here from, from, you
know, the, the policy front in China, how that's affecting, you
(02:31):
know, the, the mines and the critical minerals supply and,
and why lithium is maybe maybe quite exposed to, you know, this
emerging thematic and policy shift in, in China.
And for the listeners who don't know, this is our YJ Lee who
runs the Arcane, who's a fund manager for Arcane Capital.
And your fund performance is going through the roof, mate.
You would, you would get a date up like 56%.
(02:54):
So phenomenal, phenomenal results.
So congratulations on your tremendous performance so far.
We're glad to have your insightsto to to help us learn about
this. Yeah, hello.
Hi, guys. Yeah, great to be back on your
show. It's been what 9-10 months I
think since our last episode andboy, so much has changed in the
lithium market. I think in the previous episode
(03:15):
we were talking about well, the bottom probably arriving and I
think we are a little bit early on that.
But right now I believe we are past that.
I think the bottom was in June this year and when when spongy
min was about $600 a tonne and carbonate was 8000 and now you
(03:36):
know prices are about 50% higherthan that so.
Sponge means above 1000 bucks a tonne, like in, in the space of,
of two months. It's it's truly remarkable.
You were? Yeah.
I it's, it's amazing, Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean at that point
in time, it didn't look realistic to me, which was we
had a we had a price where 2/3 even up to 2/3 of the producers
(03:57):
in the world don't make money. And that is to me not
sustainable. You know, for an industry that's
growing easily 2530 plus percentper year doesn't make sense that
more than half the suppliers don't make money.
So I think that probably marked the bottom.
And now like you rightly point out, with the policies in China
(04:19):
coming out a bit more in supportof rational market driven
dynamics, that probably signals the bottom of the market.
How do you think about this, this anti involution?
It's like the the buzzword of the month at the moment.
YJ is it? Is it something sort of
dominating your thinking and andthe conversations you're having
as well? No, I, I wouldn't say it's
(04:41):
dominating, but this anti involution thing, let's let's
take a step back and understand how this whole thing comes about
South China. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a
huge market and it is super, super competitive.
It is not the case that, you know, like the portrait in the
(05:02):
West is all centrally planned. It's all government controlled.
Not at all. What happens actually is that
there's a central government layer, yes, which sets the
country policies. And then there are individual
provinces which kind of act likeyour states in the US, right,
who have their own concerns, their own financing, their own
(05:22):
employment numbers to look out for, their own taxes to cover.
And therefore their, their incentives might be different
from that of the national government.
So national government sets the broad country policies.
The local governments have to manage their local employment,
local economies, and then down to the private sector, which
(05:46):
then has many companies that arefighting out in the market, also
fighting out at the same time against some of the state owned
enterprises. So it's, it's, it's an open
marketplace. So I was, I was kind of
describing the, the story of competition in China right now.
That was the backdrop. And what usually happens is that
(06:07):
the government sees a clear direction forward.
For example, 1020 years ago government says batteries, we
are going to be #1 in the world in lithium and batteries.
And that's and that and they setthe long term vision for that.
Before that it was shipbuilding,before that it was steel, you
know. So what happens is that the
government has set this long term vision, then the states,
(06:30):
the provinces execute this in each of their provinces to the
best of their ability and and incentivize companies to start
up. Usually they incentivize this
via tax policies and other other, the usual economy
incentives. Yeah, some subsidies, some tax
policies, etcetera. And that allows many, many
(06:52):
companies to start up and then start competing with each other.
And you know, China is a huge place, so many provinces.
And when and when this happens, what usually happens is that at
the start of any major policy, maybe 50 to 100 companies get
started up competing in this space.
And then by virtue of their competition, the strong survive,
(07:15):
the weak die out. Typical Darwinian marketplace.
Yeah, So and this is and by by doing this, they gain the
skills, they gain the expertise,they gain the market shares and
the winners eventually become the strong companies of the
future, right. But the process of doing this
(07:35):
creates huge competition betweenthe companies in each province
and between the companies at thenational level.
That's why we are seeing today over 50 EV companies in China.
The numbers have dwindled over the last few years, Yes.
But then this is competition to the extent that they're all
(07:57):
trying to survive. And by driving prices down, that
has caused what we we have a joke.
You know, everything that Chinese do that Chinese produce,
they turn it into the price of cabbage.
We call it bite. Yeah, right.
So it goes from steel to ships to now EVs, right?
(08:17):
They're so, so cheap. You can have an EV and wooling
for what, $5000, right. So but this process of bringing
prices down, competing all the way leads to loss making
situations boom and bust cycles over over decades.
And now we are at the bottom of one of these cycles, which is
(08:39):
for lithium and which means thatnobody makes money, but some
players are going to survive andcome out the stronger for it.
And that's that's how it is in the typical Chinese way of doing
things. Yeah.
And, and that, that process, I mean, the, the, the competition
(09:00):
bit kind of makes sense. But one of the realities of the,
the competitive nature is that there are these, these price
wars which you know, might actually in in some ways be a
little bit anti competitive. The, the, the focus on this
supply side policy, anti involution, as I understand it,
it's actually looking to, to refrain from price wars by
reducing supply across, you know, industries being steel,
(09:22):
solar, you know, logistics, evenmedical devices.
That. And, and as a, as a result of
that, there's a, potentially a, a mentality or a, or a cultural
shift towards, you know, higher kind of profitability of the
businesses as a, as opposed to the, the, the, the highly
competitive overcapacity and price wars.
Is that is that like a fair characterization of of your
(09:45):
interpretation or of the policy?Yeah.
But what I'm yes, they are trying to do this.
But what I think that this may not be as successful as we think
it's going to be because this ispure market economics.
Price wars making short term losses for long term gain is
(10:05):
nothing new. Every economy goes through this.
We've seen, we've seen price wars happen in in Western
countries, in industries in the West as well.
So it does not mean that this isnative to China.
In fact, what happened with the solar industry like you
mentioned a few years ago in theduring the Green New Deal
(10:29):
periods, the solar companies were making so much money, they
are all cashed up. The big ones have billions of
yuan in, in, in the bank. They can, they can wait this
out. They can, they can make short
term losses. They're going to lose half, half
that stash, but they're going tocome out with capacities double
treble what they were five yearsago.
So and that drives down their costs in the longer term.
(10:53):
So I don't see this anti evolution policy immediately
succeeding because it is difficult.
You are fighting market pressures.
What I mean to say is that it isnatural for for many companies
in an industry to compete on prices, drive prices even below
(11:16):
costs for the short term so thatthat's to win the long term
game. And no government policy can
stamp this out immediately to the extent that yes, they might
be able to target specific players that run at a loss so
that they can subsidise them their operations in other ways.
I.e CATL, yeah, that could be successful, but industry wide, I
(11:41):
don't think it will work for thesolar industry and I don't think
it will work for the lithium industry.
Why, Jim, I'm curious to just hear a couple of thoughts on, on
why this has all kind of come about because there is a bit of
a notion that this came about from a cultural type push.
And it's the the government responding to that and that sort
of dynamic through the major cities and the the cost of
(12:03):
property rising so much and you know, salaries being so
competitive and these sorts of things.
Do do you say that? Is that how you've sort of
inferred this involution or antiinvolution policy setting coming
about? It's a little bit too early to
make firm judgements on this policy.
I think where it's coming from, yes, to some extent they do see
(12:26):
that this competition has gone alittle bit out of hand and it's
causing, it's causing kind of how, how do I say it's, it's,
it's, it's a bit of a downer in terms of the national mentality.
You know, when everybody fights it out so much that nobody makes
(12:47):
any money and everybody suffers for it, it's not a great place
to be. So I think they are trying to
change the culture a little bit towards more healthy to set the
tone for a more healthy expectation of future market
conditions. But I don't know whether that's
going to work. Yeah, yeah.
(13:07):
And a lot of the the people we've sort of spoken with have
made the comparison to the supply side reform one point O
sort of call it in the 2015 sixteen period.
How do you sort of compare and contrast the differences now is,
is that a comparison you you kind of jump at or do you think
we're in a kind of unique situation here?
(13:30):
I mean, history rhymes, right? But never repeats itself.
Back then it was mostly competition at the large SOE
level. Right now China has become very,
very much a market private, mostof the market power, a lot of
market power has shifted over tothe private companies,
(13:50):
especially in the lithium space,should I say.
And it's, I think it's harder to, you know, actually make
changes the way they want, what they want to change because, you
know, it's not a, it's not a SOEthat you have direct control
(14:12):
into. These are private businesses,
right? So, yeah, if you're trying to
have a supply side policy that is, is targeting the private
businesses, one mechanism to to to have some input there from,
you know, from, from the government level would
presumably be through these thislicensing mechanism.
And this is this is the, the part of the news flow that has,
has, has really kind of rippled through the lithium equities in
(14:33):
the last couple of weeks. And it's, it's it's in relation
to, you know, China's governmentrevising the Mineral Resources
Law and the legislation which outlines that mine registrations
and approvals are now down to the Ministry of Natural
Resources. And that also means that the
local governments can no longer license operations without
authorization from the ministry.We we kind of we we saw this a
(14:57):
little bit ripple through with with notably the junk she
cattle's mind, the Lipidala mindthere.
I think, you know, it's also goes by the name 414 as well.
How did you interpret that, You know, series of events as it
ties into this, you know this this policy as well?
I see it in terms of economic incentive.
So when lithium prices was superhigh and lipidolite started
(15:22):
coming onto the scene in 2122, then the government had no issue
with these mines coming online through whichever loopholes.
You know, a Cow Lane granite mine coming online to produce
lipidolite, right as maybe the byproduct in a way that they
don't like being a byproduct, but it actually was the main
(15:44):
economic product of the mine, therefore feeding into the
supply chains and bringing down the lithium prices so that the
battery guys and the EV guys have can survive and and
dominate the industry for the future.
Yes, that's in line with the national policy and therefore
it's allowed. Now prices have dropped so much
(16:06):
that it's that other things become more important, right?
Pollution, for example, lapidolite is highly, highly
pollutive, toxic even to refine.And then you the amount of oil
you have to booth is simply ridiculous to produce a tonne of
lithium carbonate from that Jiangxi mine, the Jiangxia war
(16:28):
mine that CATL runs, it's a very, very low grade mine.
The grade is .28% and it's lipidoli.
You need to basically at such low grades, you need to move
what, 350 tonnes of ore to produce a single tonne of LC.
Makes no sense, right? And if you want to scale this
up, some people say the, the, the capacity of this mine is
(16:49):
100,000 tonnes per year. I don't think it's that at the
moment, but that is the, that isthe longer aim.
I think. Do the math.
You need to move 35,000,000 tonnes of ore to produce that
amount of LC before refining losses.
It's. Remarkable here.
So maybe you need to produce 50.Yeah.
(17:10):
So it's crazy. I don't think they have a
35,000,000 ton operation there. And the amount of pollution that
will create will be the same. So now I think other things
become more important. Cheap raw materials can be
bought in the open market from Africa, from all over the world.
Now that now, then the local pollution issues start coming
(17:31):
up. This this one mine, the junction
like junction was junction mine that was operating under a under
a Kalin license. Like it was the categorization
was a, you know, a Kalin, A Kalin mine, but that were
obviously not producing very much Kalin or any I think.
So it was the wrong characterization.
So the, the, the thing that they've kind of been like picked
(17:53):
up on under this new, new policyor enforcement of policy is to
get that, that licensing like tobe appropriate.
There's a different royalty ratebetween the Kalin mines and, and
a little bit of like mine, as I understand as well.
So it's kind of like a, a highercross cross, like a higher cost
structure to, to, to change it. And then within that same
province, there's like there's six or eight other other mines,
(18:14):
smaller scale, which, which haveto get their own, like their own
licensing changed or September when they're, they're kind of
they're, they're they're set to lapse.
Is that all accurate? Like, and do you see risk to
them being like being being shutdown as well or like, like
what's your interpretation of that?
To be honest, I don't think anybody knows for sure.
(18:35):
It's too vague in a moment. Nobody really knows unless
you're like super super insider.Gotcha.
So these are the rumours that are swirling around in the
lithium lithium WhatsApp group chat, so.
Yeah. But I mean, I mean, let's look
at a, let's look at a bigger picture, right?
We don't need to get into too much of the nitty gritty.
It doesn't matter what the slightly different royalties for
(18:56):
different minerals, etcetera arethere.
Let's look at the bigger picture.
Catl's mine gets taken out for minimally 3 months, right?
Maybe even six months. That takes maybe about 20-30, at
least 15 to 30 kilotons of LC out of the market.
If the other mines get taken outfor a couple of months as well,
then that's that much supply outof the market.
(19:18):
But the big picture is that the lithium market last year was 1.2
million tonnes. LC this year is probably going
to be 1.5 to 1.6. I think 1.6.
Other people more conservative than 1.5.
But the bottom line is that demand is growing 25 to 33% this
year every three months that themarket, every three months the
(19:41):
demand is growing at maybe 6% or7%, right.
So think of it this way. Every three months the the world
needs to bring a new TNTR wall, a new CNTR Lipido like mine to
the market to meet the incremental demand growth.
Is that going to happen? I suppose when you pave it like
that, you're getting in the nitty gritty of the smaller
(20:03):
supply stuff. Is, is is like less like a less
pertinent part of the equation when you think of the supply
demand and, and you've you've been like constant on this point
YJ for a long time that the likeconsensus is massively
underestimating demand here. And yeah, I'm keen to just like,
peel out what? Like why, Why consensus is so
wrong. Sometimes they are looking at
(20:27):
the narrative, the, the, the story out there is that low
prices means means that demand is not catching up to supply,
Therefore demand must be slow. But that's what that's how the
the news agencies tend to portray this picture.
But the fact is that go back to economics, right?
(20:47):
Basic economics and your demand curve price quantity.
The lower the price, the larger the quantity demanded.
Translate it into real world terms, the cheaper your car, the
more people switch to this cheaper model right?
And now we now we see with low battery prices cars E VS getting
cheaper than petrol vehicles, getting cheaper than diesel
(21:08):
vehicles. Heavy used vehicles are are
switching over very, very quickly because the ROI on these
electric vehicles is so much higher.
Now. One of the things that I've been
looking at very, very closely, which I think analysts or
consensus hasn't really focused on is electric trucks.
This is huge. This is a huge market in China.
(21:31):
They sell about last year, the heavy electric trucks in China
sold about 75,000 units. This year they are on track for
160,000 units over 100% growth year on year.
Each of these heavy trucks has abattery 10 times the size of a
of a passenger car. And these trucks are going
everywhere in mining, in hauling.
(21:53):
You know, you even see China travelling autonomous trucking
in China already. So I think that the demand for
lithium is a lot higher now thatprices are low, which is which I
think is in line with economic theory.
I don't understand why analysts have a car demand growing in the
(22:14):
teens this year. Makes no sense.
So demand is going to grow gangbusters, right?
What does that sort of make you think?
If demand grows gangbusters, we know more supply needs to come
online and the supply is going to come online naturally faster
from the existing mines that arein production and can expand.
And when I think of that matter,think of Lion Town.
(22:34):
Obviously they revise their their ability to produce to to
2.8 million tons per annum that they're currently like, like
their mining rate is. But we know that that can be
like 4 million tons per annum pretty quickly, which means more
and more tons coming from underground, which means more
ground support. Is all ground support required
to enable the more mining comingfrom underground?
(22:54):
And why not use the best in the business when it comes to ground
support, Sandvik ground support?Sandvik ground support, they're
the only, the only name you needto know when it comes to ground
support, mate, because it can come to your mind in a jiffy
like that because there's distribution hubs all over the
world. They've got a team that cares
about it and they they provide tailored service, great
feedback, great people to order from great people to, to ensure
that the product is on spec and it is delivering the results
(23:16):
they need. Great, great, great person.
And Derek, Kurt A. 100%, mate. And just like the lithium market
growing gangbusters, these guys are improving year after year
after year. Mate, ground support is not
something that just needs to be sort of left in the corner.
It gets better by the day. You know what the tagline is
mate? Keeping people safe.
Keeping people safe, call Sandvik ground support one of
(23:37):
the pushbacks that a lot of people have.
And I'm really curious to hear your thoughts on why J is that a
lot of this has been subsidy LED, government incentives, tax
credits, these sorts of things, and maybe we've seen some of
them sort of peel off. How do you kind of respond to
the narrative that it's only been propped up by governments
thus far? We've seen subsidies fall off in
(23:57):
many, many economies and doesn'taffect, doesn't affect the rate
of change of EV adoption goes uptowards China is now at 50 over
percent and subsidies have been falling off year on year.
And the, the best component, thestationary storage like the, the
(24:18):
growth there has been, I think it's sort of safe to say it's
been astounding and, and underrated as well.
And I remember when we spoke a number of months ago, you were
pretty, you're pretty bullish on, on this part of the market.
I'd, I'd love to sort of get your reflections on how that's
grown versus what you, what you had thought back then and where
you see that kind of evolving. Well, actually I kind of raised
(24:41):
my best forecasts I think from 10 months ago.
I didn't, I didn't go back to check the previous numbers, but
I think they're higher now. I think by 20-30 we reach a 1.5
terawatt hour market from 200, just over 200 GW hours last
year. I think this year we are
slightly over 300. That's kind of in line with row
motions estimate as well, I think.
(25:02):
And why this is happening is because two things.
One, batteries have become so cheap that the payback period on
most grade level best is now five to seven years.
And that's great economics, right?
And in China, commercial best has now payback periods of one
to two years. I'm not kidding you.
(25:24):
I learnt this from the Fastmarkets analyst.
Credit to him, Chinese guy. After his presentation at the
Fastmarkets conference, I had tochat with him and he told me
this. What's happening in China is
that for the commercial guys, they are actually, when I say
commercial best, I mean smaller scale, privately owned best
systems, right? And what they do is that they
(25:46):
charge midday when of course prices are pretty much negative
and they discharge into the evening peak, which is the usual
best operation, right? But then they also charge
midnight and discharge early morning peak.
And that means that they use their asset twice a day, not
just once, and that drives the yield of the asset and therefore
(26:11):
the payment period becomes one to two years.
With that kind of economics, people sure as hell are putting
in tons of best into the market wherever they can.
I've not met a single best manufacturer that says that they
are short on demand. Yeah, that's, that's
fascinating. And this, this part of the
market is 1 where we've seen like a huge discrepancy with
the, with the people we've sort of spoken with and what their
(26:31):
growth assumptions are versus consensus broker.
Like a sort of factor of 2X. Like some of the, the feedback
we've gotten is that they think this part of the market is twice
as big as what a, a heap of brokers out on, on the street
have have written it up to be. Is, is that the sort of like
thinking you've got as well thatthe, the consensus in in Wall
(26:52):
Street or whoever you sort of think about there is way below
where it's actually at? People are projecting like as
opposed to observing actual installation rates.
They're they're they're they're they're projecting, you know the
the wrong numbers. Yeah, of course.
I mean, it's, it's the typical thing, right?
People tend to project in straight lines when real growth
(27:14):
is exponential. What we've seen in the best
market I see forecasts of in 2036100800 GW hours.
Well, guess what, we'll probablyreach there in two years, you
know, not five years. And the same forecast error
happens in solar. I mean, go back, go back to, and
(27:34):
that's the other part of the best equation that I forgot to
mention. Solar go back to the world
energy outlook for the last 10 years.
All right, they are, their forecasts are always off by a
factor of about 3-3 years ago they said that last year's solar
installations were going to be 200 gigawatts.
No, it was 600. And to the extent that they're
(27:57):
all forecasting linearly, the real growth has been vertical.
And now that drives the entire best market.
So much solar is being put in the world today.
A lot of markets experience negative electricity pricing
during the midday. You cannot install new solar
without new, without pairing them with batteries anymore.
(28:19):
And just in time, battery priceshave come down so much that
solar plus batteries now are even cheaper on a kilowatt
basis, kWh basis than coal or gas.
So it all makes sense now. And and if we touch on the, the
chemistry that's that's really dominating in that part of the
market, LFP, is there, is there any competition in, in your mind
(28:42):
there? No, no competition there.
LFP is cheaper. It's got more charge cycles than
NMC. Grade batteries don't really
need the the incremental increase in energy density that
NMC delivers. You don't need, you don't need a
battery to be able to provide a higher faster acceleration for
your for your car because grade batteries don't move.
(29:05):
So yeah, LFPS are are the are the chemistry of choice for
best. Very while we're on the the, the
chemistry pace, Raja, I'd love to get your observations on like
in the lead up to, to cattles like IPO the the potential, like
the potential, any observations on like cattle's discourse to
(29:26):
the market being talking up sodium ion and then sort of
subsequent and, and, and, and maybe maybe, you know, ensuring
that there was an oversupply of production in the market via
their, their, their own mind, which if you, if you just take
it on face value, the mind is uneconomic.
However, cattle is making money on having lithium price be low
when their margin is, is, is incremental there.
(29:47):
Do you, do you see any like, like are you part of the cohort
that thinks that like maybe maybe cattle was was being a
little bit disingenuous in, in their, in the way that they were
talking about sodium mine and also in, in their in, in, in
this in the supply and margin kind of component of that
market? To be honest, not really.
I mean, I don't, I don't subscribe to every single
(30:09):
conspiracy theory. Not everyone, not.
Everyone someone named me, I mean, to the extent I think keto
is did run the the mind to influence lithium prices
globally. I think that's true.
But the sodium ion battery side,I mean, I'll give them to be
honest, if I will keto, I will probably develop sodium ion
batteries as well. Because you're, you're a large
(30:31):
battery company. You can never say, you know,
five years or 10 years down the road which chemistry is going to
become dominant. You have to play every,
everything and you have the resources to develop everything
and see what works right. And if our view of the lithium
market is right, that best electric trucks, cars, the
(30:54):
demand grows so quickly that lithium cannot, that there's not
enough lithium in 2020, even 2026 onwards to meet demand to
2030. Then something has to come in
and pick up the slack. And the only something out there
right now really is sodium. Yeah.
So I think that could be a use case for sodium to pick up some
(31:16):
of the demand that cannot be metvia lithium batteries for, for
example, Best. Yes, a sodium battery setup will
require about three times the land footprint compared to LFPS.
But if you're putting Best out in the desert, yeah, I mean, you
can use three times the space. It doesn't matter.
(31:36):
So if, if we focus on the ramifications like we sort of
touched on the, the price response has been pretty, pretty
quick in, in the scheme of things.
But I think it's fair to say it's not in the interest of the
the Chinese government to see lithium prices run away to
levels they they got to sort of last time.
So how do you think about that dynamic?
(31:58):
I know that already sort of whata bit of a bit of sort of
influence in the amount of speculation that could take
place with regard to to futures pricing and these sorts of
things. Do you do you think there's a
big role that they're sort of playing behind the scenes in
where the lithium price sort of settles?
(32:19):
Honestly, no, I don't think theyare trying to guide the
government on a on a national government level basis.
I don't think they're trying to guide the price of lithium per
SE. It's a very, very small market.
And to be honest, if you look atlithium as a percentage of costs
these days, given a huge scale of manufacturing, the raw
(32:41):
material isn't, yes, it's a significant, it's some part of
the bill of materials, but it's no longer as large as as they
used to be. Now manufacturing scale has kind
of driven production costs down in a in a very big way.
So even even if lithium prices were to double from where they
are today, go from 10/10/12 thousand to 2010, 2020, 4000 per
(33:03):
tonne, LCEI think the battery market could absorb that.
CATL and BYOD have I, I think have no real issues raising
prices by a little bit to cover this cost and then everybody can
and then there'll be a healthy and incentive pricing in the
market to incentivize new supplyto come online.
(33:24):
Otherwise we go into a deficit much, much quicker than people
think. So, so if we sort of reflect on
that point the the potential supply response, obviously
through 22 into 23, we saw a magnificent supply response from
an incredible run up in the price.
And this sort of supply came from pockets where people didn't
think it might otherwise sort ofcome or it came on quicker from
(33:46):
parts, say Africa and Zimbabwe. Another sort of it would, are
there regions that you think might be able to sort of click
on supply or existing mines thatmight expand supply that you're
sort of keeping a keen eye on toto sort of see that this price
level maintains? Well, we are running out of
continents to be surprised from,right?
(34:06):
I mean, the only one is Antarctica, isn't it?
Yeah, but I mean. By two weeks from the sea floor,
mate. Well, that's that's nickel van.
People are trying that. I don't know how well that's
going to go, but. Well, that's not going there.
Yeah, yeah. But yeah, it was a small market.
(34:27):
2022 was a very small lithium market.
It was what I think if I recall correctly, an 800K ton market in
total, nothing compared to iron ore, copper, etcetera, Tiny,
tiny metal market. We are still tiny, we're still
small, but it's a lot. It's a lot bigger than before.
This year if we are 1.6 million tonnes, that's double the size,
the market size has doubled. It will not be so easy to
(34:49):
influence the price either way from here going forward.
The larger the market gets, the more supply you have to bring
online to the market to crash the price.
So in next year, we are probablyin a 2 million tonne LCE market.
You would have, if you bring on an additional 100K tonnes like
what happened from Africa three years ago, now you're now you're
(35:12):
influencing the market by 5% instead of the 16% that they
used to be. And it is not difficult, sorry,
it is not easy to bring 100K tonnes of supply to the market
quickly. How they did it in Africa was
literally they went to all the outcrops they could see and just
started digging. No mine plans, no very, very few
(35:35):
approvals. Just went in, started digging
and go. Same thing happened in Jiangxi.
We had school children. Unfortunately the economy
incentives were there. Go out into, you know, pick up
rocks, stuff it into rice sacks,load it into the back of the
truck, send it to the refiner. That's what happened.
But I don't think it is easy to influence the market in a 2 to
(36:00):
3,000,000 tonne market. I, I suppose, I suppose like
what we're trying to figure out is so we've had some, some
supply out of the market. You pave the picture that demand
is much like much higher and growing much faster than most
the market is expecting. A lot of the, the people who are
more, have a more moderate outlook for lithium in, in the
(36:20):
short term. They point to, you know,
inventories are still very high,but they're probably not
focusing on the fact that inventory days is at a local low
because the market's much bigger.
Now. Is the market tight enough in
your opinion? Like have we like is the market
so tight that we're going to seethey're pretty pronounced move
forward and upward in the price in your expectation?
Like is, are we, are we at that moment right now?
Is this, is this a trend that's going to continue or are we kind
(36:40):
of just going to like moderate around, you know, 1000 bucks a
tonne AC6? I I think you're exactly right
that people are focusing on the wrong inventory numbers,
absolute inventory levels. Yeah, they matter, but it's the
days in, in usage that really, really matters.
In a market that's growing 30% ayear, you need 30% more
(37:03):
inventory every single year. So that number has to go up.
And you're also right that it's,it's I think it's tightening in
the sense that we've not seen rejections of shipments like we
saw in the last cycle. So in the 2020 lithium up, was
(37:24):
it 2020 or 18 in the previous lithium boom, boom and crash
during the crash shipments were being rejected right from from
Australian producers. We don't see that in this
market. So something is going on.
We've heard that too. We've heard that too.
There's been no observation of any, any cargoes, yeah, like
being, being being pushed back or delayed or anything like
(37:46):
that, like it's been seen. There must be speaking with the
same people. YJ Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. So I mean to the extent that and
and it's, and it's very weird. I'm even hearing stories of low
grade, even lepidolite being refined together or or blended
into with sport, you mean. And honestly, I have no idea how
the how this technical, the technical process of this would
(38:07):
work because it to my understanding it's kind of
different processes. But yeah, I think we've got to a
point where people are realisingthe market is probably a little
bit tighter than they think. I don't want to make any
speculation on prices where theygo in the short term because
price forecasts I think are inevitably wrong.
(38:30):
But we just need to step back, take a look at the big picture
thing of incentive pricing and whether or not we are there yet.
Right now $1000 barely covers costs for Western Australian
players, Some of them. So if you want the supply to
continue producing for the next three years, it has to be here
or higher. Does $1000 incentivize new for
(38:53):
spodumene? Incentivize new supply to come
online? Barely. 12,000 LC.
Is it enough for a new brine to come online or new clay or DLEI?
Don't think so. So we're not there yet.
It's, it's simple when you just think of it in the with your
(39:15):
outlook and if you're, if you have the same expectations on
demand growth that you have. Yeah, we, we, we're, we're
pretty reflective of this momentas a, as a result of what, you
know, could, could be a substantial policy shift
combined with, you know, demand and market tightness all at the
same time. Like what do you think?
Like we, and also maybe our listeners should be, should be
(39:36):
paying more and more attention to.
The fact, the fact is that supply growth is all baked in
all right. People are producing, are
developing mines from the same places where they know that
that's been a a deposit for the last 1020 years.
So to me, supply is no longer surprising.
(40:00):
Demand is where people should spend all their time analysing
and comparing versus forecasts. I think EV adoption is growing
even faster than people think. Yes, the US is slow and the US
media dominates headlines. You know, it it articles coming
out of the US that say, oh, EV sales are slowing makes no
(40:21):
sense, right? It's growing, it's accelerating
in China, it's accelerating in. Even, shall we say less
developed economies, they are literally skipping the petrol
age. They don't want cars.
They don't want petrol cars anymore.
They are going straight for EVs.BYD is sending their 7000 car
(40:44):
car car carrier ships everywherearound the world.
That ship has gone to those ships now.
Now they have a fleet. Those ships have gone to
Germany, they have gone up northto my neighbor Malaysia, they
have come to Singapore, Right. So EVs are being exported all
around the world from China now.And I think everybody should
(41:06):
focus their attention on demand.It's growing so much faster.
Just look out for the confirmingdata.
That's a, that's a really interesting perspective, YJ
because the, the classical capital market capital cycle
investor would always sort of betaught to focus on supply
(41:27):
because supply is in a sense easier to determine because the
speed at which you can turn a mine on takes time.
And then you can, it would just sort of base from there.
Whereas the demand side needs you in a sense to understand
human psychology and these sortsof things.
But but you sort of come at it from the perspective of there's
enough confirming data. If if you look backwards, which
(41:48):
people aren't doing to, to give you that confidence to look
forward across all the sections of the market, whether it's a VS
stationary storage and sort of see that this, this is a real
sort of trend that's going to continue.
Well, well, mate, I literally have a degree in economics.
And one thing that we actually do see in economics is that
(42:08):
demand creates its own supply. Yeah, yeah.
Lower prices like to more demandthe the demand.
It's not just about lower prices, right?
I mean, if it's a very real thing, if human.
The reflexivity of yeah, yeah, the network.
Effects that come from I mean. More and more correct.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not that supply creates
demand. I mean, if you have a supply of
(42:29):
something, you still have to convince people to want it.
And then the more they want it now, then your supply becomes
valued. If you have.
Yeah, if there's something that is not demand in demand, then
you're never going to get a price for it.
But if there's a demand for something, it will drive, it
will change the market to createsupply.
So demand creates its own supply.
(42:51):
I love that point. YJ I'd, I'd, we'd love to, to
give you a bit of an overrated, underrated, quick, quick fire,
quick, quick, quick, quick, quick fire segment.
If you're, if you're open mindedand willing to give us your,
your salient views on on, you know, hopefully I've got like 10
things written down here that I'd love your overrated
underrated. I think we can add a couple as
(43:12):
well. Yeah, the the couple ideas we
will. The first one's very easy
because we know what your response is.
ESS overrated. Underrated.
Not not loved enough, but. Yes, massively underrated is the
the response. Yeah.
It's not overrated, underrated, but it's one of the other.
BYD or Tesla as an electric vehicle maker?
(43:33):
Have you got a preference? BYD.
Yeah, undeveloped Western Australian spodumene projects.
Overrated or underrated? Wow, sorry, Broad.
That's a broad, broad range, man.
I know, I know, I said. Undeveloped.
Undeveloped. There are not many big deposits
(43:56):
left. Mostly overrated, sorry.
We might have asked you this onelast time, but worth getting
another take the the future prospects of DLE.
I recently became a little bit more convinced that DLE could
work, but at the same time it isnot easy to transplant to other
(44:17):
brine fields. Therefore probably still mostly
overrated in in most people's minds.
I don't think that much DLE supply comes online in the near
term. Brazilian Spodumene.
Resilience. Spodumene Brazilian.
Brazilian. Brazilian.
Oh yeah, low cost supply will continue to produce for a long,
(44:39):
long time. Underrated.
Yeah. Albemarle.
Broad, broad question. Nah, neither overrated nor
underrated. It's it's imbalance.
Hong Kong listed lithium producers.
(45:00):
Underrated. Yeah.
How about investing in Chile forfor lithium production?
You really want to get into thatall.
You have to say is overrated consolidation probability of
(45:22):
Chinese downstream. Low.
Yeah. This one's sort of slightly
adjacent, but I know you've you've covered it in the past.
Overrated or underrated Silver? Ah, still underrated.
Beautiful YJ I've got, I've got none, none left, but all I've
(45:43):
got is just appreciation for your insights and you're making
the time to give give you a salient use an analysis.
It's refreshing, it's compelling, it's course for us
to to evaluate our own assumptions in a, in a market
that's clearly growing rapidly. And yeah, congratulations on
your awesome performance so far.And and we hope you will come
back and and join us in the future as as the market
(46:05):
continues to to develop here. Oh, yeah, definitely.
Thank you guys again for the opportunity to be on your show.
Just happy that, yeah, now at least we have a bit of a track
record to show potential investors.
And I hope that you know this, this gets our, you know, our
name out there a little bit more.
Thank you. Absolutely great to chat again
(46:25):
YJ, thank you. Thank you.
Super Insights. Super Insights makes me reflect
a lot yeah. Big big big fan of IJ Big fan of
our partners which make our production possible.
Big thanks to them A. 100% Axis mineral Services, Sandy Ground
support Africa down under and focus by market Tech mate.
Uduru. Uduru.
(46:46):
Now remember, I'm an idiot. JD's an idiot.
If you thought. Any of this was anything other
than entertainment. You're an idiot and you need to
read out a disclaimer.
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