Talison Lithium, the world’s only pure lithium producer

Leading the change is lithium, which until very recently, has been used primarily for the production of aluminum, tritium, ceramics, high temperature grease and glass.

But lithium makes an excellent battery for use in a wide range of applications – batteries using lithium have been found to have a high energy to weight ratio, can be molded into amazing shapes and have longer lives than conventional batteries.

And when used as a rechargeable battery there is no memory effect.

Talison Lithium Inc. TSX – TLH is the world’s largest primary lithium producer – production from its Australian operation fills roughly a third of the world’s lithium demand and supplies 75% of Chinese demand.

Talison began trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange September 22nd 2010. The company’s initial public offering (IPO) raised $40 million. An additional bought deal financing of $80 million, including over allotment, was recently announced. This money is being used to nearly double production at their Greenbushes lithium mining operation in Australia, and exploration at their new Salares 7 project in Chile.

The Greenbushes Lithium Operation has been producing lithium for over 25 years. The mine is located 250 kilometers (km) south of Perth/Fremantle – a major container shipping port – and 90 km south east of the Port of Bunbury – a major bulk handling port – in Western Australia.

The Greenbushes ore body is a highly mineralized zoned pegmatite with a strike length of more than three km – Greenbushes mineral reserve is unique, it grades 50% spodumene. This makes Greenbushes the highest grade lithium mineral resource in the world at 3.9% Li2O mineral reserves and 3.5% Li2O mineral resources versus 1.0 – 2.0% Li2O for other known hard rock deposits.

Talison’s Greenbushes lithium mineral resource is open along strike and at depth so there is significant potential to increase lithium mineral reserves and mineral resources extending the life of mine (LOM) while at the same time increasing production rates.

Talison’s Greenbushes Lithium Operation produces two categories of lithium concentrates:

* Technical-grade lithium concentrates – low iron content for use in the manufacture of glass, ceramics and heat-proof cookware
* High yielding chemical-grade lithium concentrate – used to produce lithium chemicals which form the basis for manufacture lithium-ion batteries for laptop computers, mobile phones and electric cars
Talison does not produce lithium chemical products, instead the company sells lithium concentrate directly to customers for processing into lithium chemicals. Presently Talison is expanding its lithium production to supply the growing need in the battery market. Talison designed its initial Stage 1 expansion to increase total production capacity to approximately 62,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent.

Aggressive and continual demand caused Talison to plan for further expansion by nearly doubling the current run-rate production of 50,000t lithium carbonate equivalent to 100,000t – the Stage 2 expansion of the chemical-grade plant is being funded by the recent $80 million financing. Long lead time items for the expansion have already been ordered.

Most of the world’s lithium comes from a small group of producers:

Talison
Sociedad Quimica y Minera (SQM), the Chilean national mining and chemical company
Chemetall, part of Rockwood Holdings
FMC, part of FMC Corporation
Talison is the only primary pure lithium producer in the group and is the only one of the four not producing from brine operations in South America.

Talison’s IPO completed the merger between itself and Vancouver based Salares Lithium Inc. Talison bought Salares Lithium to get control of of their early stage Salares 7 lithium brine project in Chile.

This two pronged approach – combining hard rock and brine mining in one company – towards meeting increased global demand for lithium makes a lot of sense. Lithium production from brine is dependent on the weather, if the sun isn’t shining evaporation rates suffer – but brine mining lithium has the added benefit of potentially low cost production with margins as high as 50%. Meanwhile production of lithium from hard rock carries on 24/7/365.