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Panelists pointed to a greater diversification of demand, including from the Energy Storage System (ESS) sector. However, the build-out of ex-China processing, for lithium salts but also for cathode active material (CAM), remains a key bottleneck in the development of these independent supply chains.
In 2026, China is forecast to account for around 84% of globally announced CAM capacity, according to Fastmarkets’ research team. South Korea is expected to be the next largest CAM producer by country, accounting for 8.60% of globally announced CAM capacity.
China is also expected to remain the leader in processed lithium production, accounting for around 71% of production on a lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) basis in 2026.
“We’re 100% behind the [US] administration’s pursuit of the global diversification of supply, of competitive supply chains around the world,” Eric Norris, lithium major Albemarle’s chief commercial officer, said. “We don’t lack resources in the United States, we have a battery infrastructure that has been built by the automotive companies, we lack everything in between — and that’s where really we’ve been spending a lot of time with the administration to emphasize this point.”
“I think the geopolitical shifts are more of a tailwind than a headwind, although it’s definitely very complex. I can’t help but see, frankly, the upside,” Dale Henderson, chief executive officer of Australian miner PLS, said.
“There’s lots of midstream and downstream processing to be built out, and it’s a huge opportunity for businesses like ourselves to capitalize,” Henderson added.
Earlier in June 2026, Australian lithium producer PLS opened the country’s first mine-site lithium midstream processing facility, producing lithium phosphate, an intermediate material for lithium-ion battery production at its Pilgangoora operation in Western Australia.
“I think the difference is the demand is there [compared with the previous lithium price cycle of 2021-2023], and our focus needs to be on developing the resilient supply chains,” Barbara Fochtman, managing director at Rio Tinto Lithium, said.
Fastmarkets’ daily assessment for lithium carbonate 99.5% Li2CO3 min, battery grade, spot prices cif China, Japan & Korea was $20.00-21.50 per kg on June 23, up sharply from $13.00-16.00 per kg at the start of the year on January 2.
A lack of coordinated policy support regarding the high cost of building out ex-China processing infrastructure, as well as incentivizing demand, remains a key barrier to building out an independent ex-China supply chain.
“If you take the spodumene price that people buy and sell at today, and [convert it to] the kilogram of battery-grade salts, the spread that’s left is basically the marginal cash cost of production in China,” Albemarle’s Norris said. “Outside of China, that processing is going to be at least two to three times that, depending on which jurisdiction you’re going to be in.”
Fastmarkets’ daily assessment for spodumene, min 6% Li2O, spot price, cif China was $2,220-2,320 per tonne on June 23, down from $2,450-2,520 per tonne a week earlier.
Norris noted that this stark cost curve variation has led Albemarle to be “more selective in our decisions where we can’t be efficient in processing to pull back,” citing the idling of the Kemerton lithium hydroxide plant in Australia and the decision to delay plans for a battery-grade lithium hydroxide plant in Richburg, South Carolina, in the US.
“We’d like to send [raw materials for processing] to an ally nation or most desirably into a US operation, and to do that we have to think of the right policy metrics from a price support standpoint to encourage processing,” Norris added.
Gracelin Baskaran, director of the Critical Minerals Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), noted that “there’s pretty much universal agreement that price support is needed.”
“Western companies can’t operate on a loss-making basis, but the difficulty is no one agrees on who should pay for [price floors],” she added.
Baskaran also pointed to a need for the “longevity of current policies,” citing the 45X advanced manufacturing tax credit in the US, which is set to be phased out in 2032.
“2032 is just around the corner when you’re thinking about developing a mining project,” she said. “We saw this now with 30D [the US clean vehicle tax credit phased out in September 2025] — the quarter before 30D actually expired was the highest quarter on record of electric vehicle sales, but when that phased out, we lost that incentive.”
Lee Allen in Las Vegas contributed to this report.
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