Indonesia has played a key role in global markets as a bulk materials supplier, but President Joko Widodo has pledged to eventually stop exports of all raw commodities to turn the country into a major manufacturing hub for electric transportation.

Indigenous communities living around Chile’s Atacama salt flat last year asked authorities to suspend SQM’s operating permits or reduce its operations until it submits an environmental compliance plan acceptable to regulators.

The country awarded two of five contracts on offer -- one to Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD and another to local firm Servicios y Operaciones Mineras del Norte.

SGX will partner with Fastmarkets, the price reporting agency for these products.

Rio Tinto recently committed $2.4 billion to develop a lithium-borates project in the western Jadar valley.

“We’ve got decades worth of high rates of investment into infrastructure as the world seeks to decarbonize. That’s a widely held consensual view."

Lithium has burst into 2022 with a fresh price spike that hands electric-vehicle makers more warning of even sharper cost pressures to come.