schreef:
“In the lithium market, demand continues to grow at record rates, and total market demand should be over 20% more in 2018 than seen last year. Average prices during the first three months of this year surpassed US$16,000/MT given a tight supply and demand balance. We believe that this price pressure will continue throughout the first half of the year.”
Mr. De Solminihac continued by saying, “Given this lithium demand growth, we plan to increase our capacity in Chile in three different stages and continue with the developments of our projects in Argentina and in Australia. As previously disclosed, during 2018 in Chile, we have been working to expand our production from 48,000 to 70,000 MT, with a total capex of US$75 million. We expect this additional 22,000 MT of capacity to be operating by the end of this year. The second stage of the expansion in the Salar de Atacama, in which we will increase production from 70,000 to 120,000 MT (previously 100,000 MT), will be completed in the next 18 months with a total investment of US$200 million. Finally, we will add an additional 60,000 metric tons of capacity to our operations, investing around US$250 million to increase our capacity from 120,000 MT to 180,000 MT. We expect this third stage to be online by early 2021. We believe that with demand growing close to 20% this year and next year, the market will be able to absorb this additional supply. However, we reiterate that we are constantly reviewing market conditions; our strategy is to have the installed capacity to react to the market demand.”