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This means the lithium contract price assessments will continue to be published on their regular schedule until Tuesday December 24, the date of the last assessments.
Fastmarkets had previously decided to publish the last assessments on September 25.
The postponement takes into account the needs of market participants that still have in place physical contracts linked to any of the lithium contract assessments Fastmarkets publish.
The lithium contract price assessments follow the UK holiday pricing schedule. Due to the Christmas Day holiday in the UK on December 25, the assessments scheduled on December 25 will be published on December 24, in accordance with Fastmarkets’ methodology.
Fastmarkets’ decision to discontinue these assessments follows a six-month consultation that started on October 23, 2023, and a previous extended period of preliminary discussions with a wide cross-section of market participants in the lithium industry.
The feedback received alongside interrogation of existing data collected by Fastmarkets suggested that these prices no longer reflect the dynamics of the physical lithium market.
The evolving lithium marketplace in recent years has resulted in long-term contract negotiations increasingly linked to spot price indexation. This evolution has resulted in an extended period of low liquidity in the data collection of the lithium contract prices.
The affected prices are:• MB-LI-0031 Lithium hydroxide monohydrate LiOH.H2O 56.5% LiOH min, battery grade, contract price cif China, Japan & Korea• MB-LI-0027 Lithium carbonate 99.5% Li2CO3 min, battery grade, contract price cif China, Japan & Korea• MB-LI-0030 Lithium hydroxide monohydrate LiOH.H2O 56.5% LiOH min, technical and industrial grades, contract price cif China, Japan & Korea• MB-LI-0026 Lithium carbonate 99% Li2CO3 min, technical and industrial grades, contract price cif China, Japan & Korea• MB-LI-0024 Lithium hydroxide monohydrate LiOH.H2O 56.5% LiOH min, battery grade, contract price ddp Europe and US• MB-LI-0022 Lithium carbonate 99.5% Li2CO3 min, battery grade, contract price ddp Europe and US• MB-LI-0020 Lithium hydroxide monohydrate LiOH.H2O 56.5% LiOH min, technical and industrial grades, contract price ddp Europe and US• MB-LI-0018 Lithium carbonate 99% Li2CO3 min, technical and industrial grades, contract price ddp Europe and US
The historic data for the lithium contract assessments will remain available on the pricing section of the Fastmarkets website.
Fastmarkets will continue to publish spodumene contract price assessments and all other spot lithium and spodumene price assessments as normal.
Fastmarkets constantly reviews the specifications of its lithium prices and it has recently amended the minimum accepted lithium grade and volume of its MB-LI-0012 spodumene min 6% Li2O, spot price, cif China and its MB-LI-0043 spodumene min 6% Li2O, contract price, cif China
The recently announced change followed consultations with market participants and observation of the evolution of the lithium-ion battery supply chain with more interest observed for regionalized prices and increased transparency requested for the upstream evolving spodumene market.
If you have any comments on the discontinuation of the lithium contract prices, please contact Zihao Li or Ewan Thomson by email at: pricing@fastmarkets.com. Please add the subject heading: “FAO: Zihao Li/Ewan Thomson re Lithium contract price discontinuation.”
Please indicate if comments are confidential. Fastmarkets will consider all comments received and will make comments not market as confidential available upon request.
To see all Fastmarkets pricing methodology and specification documents go to: https://www.fastmarkets.com/methodology.