Tony Ottaviano needs to deliver his flagship lithium mine. A spurned $5.5 billion takeover offer and dip in prices for the battery metal have upped the pressure.
, he was channelling former Rio Tinto boss Tom Albanese.
That deal was done before Ottaviano arrived on the scene, but he’s one of the band of Tim Goyder associates who have made millions out of the stock. “I’ve got to ask myself the question: if I’ve got a spare $1.2 billion, do I build a refinery? Or do I invest that in more spodumene mines? There’s a threshold question there that we are trying to answer now. Is downstream the value maximising pathway? Or should we just stay as a raw materials producer?” Ottaviano says.
It signed binding offtake agreements with South Korea’s LG Chem, Elon Musk’s Tesla and Ford that account for 450,000 tonnes a year, or 90 per cent, of the spodumene concentrate Kathleen Valley is slated to produce from mid-2024. It calculates the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act includes credits of $US7500 per electric vehicle produced through non-China battery mineral supply chains.
Like other miners and downstream players, Ottaviano has been waiting for the “real price index to please stand up”. The industry has watched the first two lithium hydroxide plants built in WA – and the first in the world outside China – struggle to hit production targets after delays and huge cost blowouts.“The reason I like an intermediate product like a lithium sulphate is that part of a refinery is more in the wheelhouse of expertise of a miner. The back end is a complex chemical set,” he says.
“There’s no bigger way to disrespect a frontline worker than by giving them documentation that’s out of date, documentation they can’t find or documentation that’s full of mistakes,” he says. He received the call to say he had been charged on his birthday. It was a tough period that has stayed with him.
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