PERTH (miningweekly.com) – ASX-listed Piedmont Lithium has announced plans to accelerate its lithium hydroxide strategy timeline, on the back of strong market interest.

The US-focused Piedmont on Wednesday said that it would accelerate the development of its lithium chemicals plant by one year while deferring the mine and concentrator construction start date by one year, effectively compressing the project timeline into a single stage, with the target of starting lithium chemical production by late 2022.

The integration is expected to result in improved project economics given the higher margins associated with the lithium chemicals business, while eliminating spodumene concentrate sales into the Chinese market.

“Over the past several months, we have engaged in encouraging dialogue with prospective customers throughout the lithium supply chain. Themes that are common to all of the discussions are the dramatic growth in lithium hydroxide required to support the electric vehicle platforms currently being developed, the strong desire for lithium customers to diversify their supply sources away from the dominant China market, and the concrete plans of selected parties to aggressively develop their battery supply chains in the US and Europe,” said Piedmont president and CEO Keith Phillips.

“Nobody is better positioned than Piedmont to capitalise on these developments. Ours is the only spodumene project in the US, and it is the only US lithium project focused on the fast-growing hydroxide market. We are ideally placed to serve the rapidly growing battery supply chain in both the US and Europe.”

Piedmont is hoping to secure key federal permits for the mine and concentrator by the fourth quarter of this year, while lithium hydroxide testwork will also start before the end of the year. A chemical plant prefeasibility study is expected by the second quarter of 2020.

Meanwhile, an integrated definitive feasibility study and chemical plant permitting has been targeted for the fourth quarter of next year.

An initial scoping study into the mine and concentrator project estimated that it would require a capital investment of $168-million to sustain an annual production rate of 22 700 t/y of lithium hydroxide over a mine life of 25 years.

Piedmont said on Wednesday that offtake discussions were advancing with a number of participants, along with marketing efforts for the byproduct quartz, feldspar and mica that will be produced.