Spodumene 6% · Origin deep dive

Loads in bulk at Port Hedland for Pilgangoora and Wodgina, Bunbury for Greenbushes, and Esperance for goldfields mines.

Spodumene concentrate at 6.0% Li2O with low iron and mica, the hard-rock benchmark against which all grades adjust.

Handysize bulk cargoes run to Chinese converters, while domestic tonnes feed the Kwinana and Kemerton hydroxide plants.

Chinese converters Ganfeng, Tianqi and Yahua, plus integrated Australian hydroxide trains supplying Korean and Japanese cathode chains.

Producer auctions and quarterly index-linked contract resets set the cadence; mining itself runs largely uninterrupted year-round.

Index illiquidity on thin spot liquidity, converter-margin whiplash, and supply discipline decisions by majors during price downswings.

Sigma trucks concentrate from Minas Gerais's Jequitinhonha Valley roughly 500 kilometres to Vitoria for containerized export.

Roughly 5.5% Li2O 'triple-zero green' concentrate marketed on dry-stacked tailings, renewable power and coarse, low-impurity spec.

Dense-media separation without chemicals simplifies the plant; the long inland truck leg is the main cost and bottleneck.

Chinese converters on term deals plus trading-house offtakes, with the green premium pitched at Western cathode chains.

The November-March Minas Gerais rainy season can slow haulage; pricing otherwise follows the SC6 index cycle.

Single-asset concentration, ownership and financing turbulence, and full exposure to the Australian-set concentrate price as a price-taker.

Zimbabwean mines truck to Beira and Durban; Goulamina in Mali runs a long road corridor to Ivorian ports.

Typically SC5.5-type concentrate with grade and impurity penalties against the Australian SC6 reference, some petalite from Bikita.

Thousand-kilometre-plus trucking chains through multiple borders dominate cost; most output is captive to Chinese owner-integrators.

Chinese integrated groups Ganfeng, Huayou, Sinomine and Chengxin ship concentrate home to their own conversion plants.

Regional wet seasons around the turn of the year slow the Mozambique and Sahel road corridors.

Zimbabwe's beneficiation mandates and export levies, Mali's junta-era fiscal and security pressure, and thin margins at low prices.

Domestic short-haul only: Yichun lepidolite moves by truck to nearby Jiangxi conversion plants, quoted on an SC6-equivalent basis.

Low-grade lithium mica around 1.5-2% Li2O with high fluorine and heavy tailings burden, costly to convert.

Integrated mine-to-carbonate circuits inside Jiangxi; no seaborne leg, but tailings disposal and fluorine handling constrain throughput.

CATL-affiliated and merchant Jiangxi converters producing carbonate that clears into the domestic cathode chain.

Environmental inspection campaigns and licence reviews, not weather, drive the stop-start operating pattern.

As the marginal ton, lepidolite shutdowns like the Jianxiawo suspensions can gap global lithium prices in either direction.