Some fantastic thoughts on the partnering process provided by a number of posters here in the last 24 hours.  I thought I would start a new thread to keep the discussion going, and I hereby provide my thoughts …

The issue with the lithium-ion battery supply chain in the US right now is the minimal lithium chemical production, and minimal cathode material production (i.e. the mixing of the lithium/iron/nickel/cobalt/manganese chemicals that are then applied to the cathodes).  TP and a few others will go a long way to addressing the first issue, but if TP were in production today, the lithium chemicals would need to be exported to Asia or Europe for further processing. Clearly there would be plenty of customers eager to take the TP product, but in the long term it doesn’t make sense to export the chemicals, and then import the cathodes. I agree with AXP, LAC should be looking to team up with a battery materials producer - someone who has the expertise, track record and balance sheet to set up a production facility in the US, quickly and at scale. In turn, that materials producer needs to team up with a cathode and battery producer(s), who needs to team up with an OEM(s) ...

As far as I am aware, there has only been two companies that have talked about establishing large scale and near-term cathode materials production in the US – Tesla and Redwood. Tesla seems to have a problem with use of acid in the chemical production process (naive in my view), so I doubt LAC will be teaming up with them. Redwood has huge ambitions, and has teamed up with Ford, but has no source of (non-recycled) lithium chemicals, as yet. Watch that space.

Its only a matter of time before the big foreign cathode material producers enter the US market. Watch for BASF (German), Umicore (Belgium), and a raft of Japanese and Korean players. These guys understand chemical processing, and will not be bothered by the use of acid in the flowsheet.

I think it is entirely possible that LAC will retain 100% of the mine (i.e producing lithium sulphate), and JV the lithium chemical processing facility (producing carbonate and hydroxide) with a big name player. That would provide a customer, chemical processing expertise and financing - a great outcome IMO.

These are my thoughts. I am usually wrong. Onward and upward.