Locking in supplies of key battery raw materials lithium and cobalt has been a headache for electric car manufacturers, but these days it’s the supply of nickel and graphite that’s keeping them up at night.
Production in the second-quarter of the year jumped 6.1% to 163,200 tonnes, as higher output at its Centinela and Antucoya mines mitigated declines at Los Pelambres and Zaldívar.
The expansion, on top of a $238 million upgrade due for completion in April, will double the mine’s production to 1.95 million tonnes a year of lithium concentrate a year from 2020.
The ongoing trade war between the United States and China has forced the Chilean Copper Commission (Cochilco) to revise downwards its average copper price prediction by $0.06 per pound to $3.