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.
RUN IT BACK: A succesful first project working with hyperscalers to design chips encouraged MediaTek to start a second project, aiming to hit stride in 2028 MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it is engaging a second hyperscaler to help design artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators used in data centers following a similar project expected to generate revenue streams soon. The first AI accelerator project is to bring in US$1 billion revenue next year and several billion US dollars more in 2027, MediaTek chief executive officer Rick Tsai (蔡力行) told a virtual investor conference yesterday. The second AI accelerator project is expected to contribute to revenue beginning in 2028, Tsai said. MediaTek yesterday raised its revenue forecast for the global AI accelerator used
TEMPORARY TRUCE: China has made concessions to ease rare earth trade controls, among others, while Washington holds fire on a 100% tariff on all Chinese goods China is effectively suspending implementation of additional export controls on rare earth metals and terminating investigations targeting US companies in the semiconductor supply chain, the White House announced. The White House on Saturday issued a fact sheet outlining some details of the trade pact agreed to earlier in the week by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that aimed to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Under the deal, China is to issue general licenses valid for exports of rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite “for the benefit of US end users and their suppliers
Dutch chipmaker Nexperia BV’s China unit yesterday said that it had established sufficient inventories of finished goods and works-in-progress, and that its supply chain remained secure and stable after its parent halted wafer supplies. The Dutch company suspended supplies of wafers to its Chinese assembly plant a week ago, calling it “a direct consequence of the local management’s recent failure to comply with the agreed contractual payment terms,” Reuters reported on Friday last week. Its China unit called Nexperia’s suspension “unilateral” and “extremely irresponsible,” adding that the Dutch parent’s claim about contractual payment was “misleading and highly deceptive,” according to a statement
Artificial intelligence (AI) giant Nvidia Corp’s most advanced chips would be reserved for US companies and kept out of China and other countries, US President Donald Trump said. During an interview that aired on Sunday on CBS’ 60 Minutes program and in comments to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said only US customers should have access to the top-end Blackwell chips offered by Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company by market capitalization. “The most advanced, we will not let anybody have them other than the United States,” he told CBS, echoing remarks made earlier to reporters as he returned to Washington
RSS