A lithium miner in Australia that counts Tesla Inc as a future customer yesterday said its first shipment of the key battery material from its flagship project is expected by the end of the year.
Adelaide-based Core Lithium Ltd said in a statement that its Finniss project near Darwin is “progressing well,” and the mining has accelerated “with the arrival of the dry season and the commissioning of an additional excavator and trucks to site.”
The project is set to supply spodumene concentrate — a lithium bearing material — to firms including Tesla, China’s Ganfeng Lithium Co (贛鋒鋰業) and Sichuan Yahua Industrial Group Co (雅化實業).
In March, Core Lithium said the project would provide up to 110,000 tonnes of spodumene concentrate to Tesla over four years.
The electric vehicle giant has been locking in offtake agreements with existing lithium miners including another Australian company, Liontown Resources Ltd, which said earlier this month that it expects to start shipments to Tesla from 2024.
Prices of lithium, the ingredient that is crucial to power electric vehicles, had an eye-popping rally of almost 500 percent in the past year, boosting miners’ profits.
However, automakers feeling the pain from escalating costs across raw materials have started to raise sticker prices for their electric vehicles.
Core Lithium said the early stage mining operations at the Finniss project were affected by higher rainfall and an extended wet season, resulting in a temporary increase in fuel consumption and postponements to open-pit mining.
The year-end target is also subject to the ramp-up, and the site avoiding more COVID-19 or weather-related delays, it said.
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
GROWING CONCERN: Some senior Trump administration officials opposed the UAE expansion over fears that another TSMC project could jeopardize its US investment Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is evaluating building an advanced production facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and has discussed the possibility with officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration, people familiar with the matter said, in a potentially major bet on the Middle East that would only come to fruition with Washington’s approval. The company has had multiple meetings in the past few months with US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and officials from MGX, an influential investment vehicle overseen by the UAE president’s brother, the people said. The conversations are a continuation of talks that
CHIP DUTIES: TSMC said it voiced its concerns to Washington about tariffs, telling the US commerce department that it wants ‘fair treatment’ to protect its competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reiterated robust business prospects for this year as strong artificial intelligence (AI) chip demand from Nvidia Corp and other customers would absorb the impacts of US tariffs. “The impact of tariffs would be indirect, as the custom tax is the importers’ responsibility, not the exporters,” TSMC chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at the chipmaker’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Hsinchu City. TSMC’s business could be affected if people become reluctant to buy electronics due to inflated prices, Wei said. In addition, the chipmaker has voiced its concern to the US Department of Commerce
STILL LOADED: Last year’s richest person, Quanta Computer Inc chairman Barry Lam, dropped to second place despite an 8 percent increase in his wealth to US$12.6 billion Staff writer, with CNA Daniel Tsai (蔡明忠) and Richard Tsai (蔡明興), the brothers who run Fubon Group (富邦集團), topped the Forbes list of Taiwan’s 50 richest people this year, released on Wednesday in New York. The magazine said that a stronger New Taiwan dollar pushed the combined wealth of Taiwan’s 50 richest people up 13 percent, from US$174 billion to US$197 billion, with 36 of the people on the list seeing their wealth increase. That came as Taiwan’s economy grew 4.6 percent last year, its fastest pace in three years, driven by the strong performance of the semiconductor industry, the magazine said. The Tsai
RSS