Oversold lithium could be about to rally

In August, Macquarie Research provided the final straw after chiming in with a warning that the market was "sleepwalking into a tsunami of oversupply."

The report put the final nail in the coffin of the decade-long lithium rally-- Fastmarkets reckons that prices for battery-grade lithium carbonate in China, by far the world's largest consumer of high-grade lithium carbonate, tumbled 50.31 percent last year to 75,000-83,000 ($10,885-12,046) yuan per tonne from 158,000-160,000 ($22,932-23,222) yuan per tonne the previous year, as demand waned.

IMG URL: https://d32r1sh890xpii.cloudfront.net/tinymce/2019-01/1548715309-a33.jpg
Source: Metal Bulletin

But maybe the bear camp rushed their fences this time…

While it's undeniable that the carnage managed to exceed even Morgan Stanley's decidedly pessimistic outlook for global lithium prices to drop 45 percent by 2021, the fundamentals suggest that the selloff was greatly overdone and such low prices cannot be justified by simple market forces of supply and demand.

According to London-based Benchmark Minerals Intelligence senior analyst Andrew Miller, the disconnect between lithium prices and the demand side of the equation has never been bigger.

Reality Check

A cross-section of materials experts have raised eyebrows at the negative assessment, criticizing the investment analysts for underestimating the rise in lithium demand and the complex nature of lithium mining and production ramps. According to them, both MS and Macquarie failed to account for just how big the gap between supply forecast and actual production can be.

And, they might be spot on.

Supply expansions in 2018 came in much lower than predicted and the tsunami of oversupply forecast by the likes of Macquarie Research proved to be little more than changing tides in the lithium supply chain.

A good case in point is Brisbane-based Orocobre, which has become the poster child for just how challenging new brine mining can be. The company's Salar de Olaroz project in Argentina took seven years to hit its stride but still came up short of production targets. Meanwhile, run-ins with the courts and regulators coupled with mutual accusations of license violations facing Chile's lithium giants SQM and Albemarle at their Atacama brine projects further reinforce this point.