Lithium Prices Soar as top Companies Fight for Supply
LONDON, March 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- A new technology is here that has the potential to reshape lithium production in the same way fracking reshaped oil. In fact, as reported by USA Today , Musk offered $325 million for the International Battery Metals' CEO's previous company and lithium extraction technology.
But a major New York Global Investment Bank valued this company at 7X this number, $2.5 billion. The gap was too wide, and a deal was never completed. Now, the CEO is taking the knowledge he gained over to International Battery Metals. And today, after making drastic and patentable improvements to create a technology, they are the only company with "fracking tech for lithium."
The world should get this breaking story now. The global battery market is set to hit $120 billion in less than two years, and there could be a massive investor opportunity here in lithium-but this isn't a mining play, it's a tech play. In the swarm of new entrants to the lithium playing field, International Battery Metals (IBAT; RHHNF) stands out-front and center-because it's sitting on a proprietary advanced technology that could push lithium into the production stage rapidly. Where traditional solar evaporation technology takes up to 24 months to extract lithium from brine, IBAT's incoming CEO Burba says he can do it in 24 hours. That would put IBAT on the front line of new lithium coming online to meet the battery demand. Lithium is currently produced through a grueling 24-month solar evaporation process that entails slowly extracting all other elements from the brine until only lithium remains. IBAT's technology is designed to remove evaporation ponds from the equation. As inventor-CEO John Burba puts it: "Our tech has such a high specificity for lithium that it can directly take the lithium out." With its eye on the lithium prize, IBAT is going for fast production and commercial scalability, at a time when lithium prices per metric ton are fantastic.
Disruptive technology changes everything, and if the deal with NAL completes and IBAT's tech breaks through successfully, it could potentially do for lithium what fracking did to unlock shale for the U.S. oil and gas industry.
Quelle: https://www.goldseiten.de/artikel/...-Companies-Fight-for-Supply.html
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