Article by Simone Grogan, courtesy of The West Australian.
WA’s next lithium producer has joined the fray as Liontown Resources delivers its first spodumene concentrate from its flagship Kathleen Valley mine 21/2 years after starting construction.
The Tony Ottaviano-led company confirmed the milestone to the market on Wednesday morning after assuring earlier this week that first production was “imminent”.
“This is a monumental moment for Liontown and marks our transition from a construction project to a producer of high-quality lithium concentrate,” the chief executive, pictured, said.
Liontown is set to start delivering tonnes of the battery metals input to customers in the coming weeks. Automakers Tesla and Ford as well as South Korean electronics conglomerate LG have signed up for product from the miner’s operation in the Goldfields.
So far 216,000 tonnes has been mined and Liontown said its stockpiles of clean ore were ready for processing.
The next steps for Liontown will be finishing up commissioning for non-critical areas of the plant and wrapping up construction of underground infrastructure so the miner can hit its projected throughput capacity of 3mtpa for 500,000tpa of spodumene concentrate.
Liontown said on Wednesday it expected to hit that target by the end of the first quarter of 2025.
“First production signals the start of our ramp-up towards 3mtpa capacity and, in partnership with our tier-1 offtake customers, paves the way for us to pursue our long-term strategy to be a globally significant supplier of battery minerals as the world transitions to a low-carbon future,” Mr Ottaviano said.
It’s been a tense journey for the Tim Goyder-chaired company, with lithium prices now a far cry from the lofty heights of 2022 when the company had started construction against the backdrop of industry-wide cost blowouts.
In that time the company was also in the crosshairs of US chemicals giant Albemarle, in a deal that was ultimately not to be. Liontown has also come out at the other end of the build with a new shareholder at the top of its register, Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting.
Funding for the project has also been an eventful process. The company raised more than $1 billion in debt and equity in October 2023, only for that round of debt to get pulled back and renegotiated with a smaller group of banks against a backdrop of unstable lithium forecasts.
Liontown later switched the commercial bank and government-backed debt for a convertible note arrangement with its offtake customer LG Energy under “less restrictive covenants”.
Liontown has just over $500m in the bank.
The market has reacted positively to the news, with Liontown shares closing on Wednesday 3.83 per cent higher to 95¢.
