Albermarle - a Aussie company does about 1/3 of the worlds lithium mining.
SQM - a company out of Chile.
China - does the rest.
Each is responsible for ~ 1/3 of the worlds lithium production. Although SQM is on the downfall due to the referendum recently. And China is on the rise as companies like BYD are trying to really take over much of the larger lithium battery market, especially with EV cars but even laptops etc.
Most of this came from my own research for investment reasons.
Given this split at face value, then the inference that 85% of lithium is in compliance with international regulations is false. It would be at most 67%, and probably more like 33% in compliance actually.
Albemarle Corporation is an American specialty chemicals manufacturing company based in Charlotte, North Carolina. It operates 3 divisions: lithium (68.4% of 2022 revenues), bromine specialties (19.3% of 2022 revenues) and catalysts (12.3% of 2022 revenues).
It holds significant part ownership of Australian located Lithium mines (and mines in Chile):
> Talison Minerals Pty Ltd was a mining company based in Australia. It was split into Talison Lithium (as of 2020 a 51:49 jv between Tianqi Lithium and Albemarle Corporation)
and:
> Tianqi Lithium Corp is a Chinese mining and manufacturing company based in Sichuan.
Ero: mining of concentrates is carried on Australian (and Chilean) soil and subject to Australian mining regulations (some of the highest in the world ATM) with the refinment of concentrates being carried in Malaysia (high standards), Australia (high standards), some in China (various standards).
The point being that mineral resource ownership and regulation is a complicated layered business and your inference is sketchy at best.
If you're interested in learning more you can either study more on your own or subscribe to a mineral intelligence database, eg:
Well my comment is regarding who is doing the mining and more importantly where itβs being sourced.
Some have more regulations than others.
Chile has been looking to socialize its mining ops. So the international interests in their sources has waned a bit.
China does it cheaper but with far less concern about safety, environmental friendliness etc.
Overall these companies account for the lions share of raw lithium materials in the world. But what specific percentage and who is buying from who are totally different topics. For example why would a company like BYD look outside of China for lithium for its batteries?
BYD is a big supplier of batteries for companies like Dell, Lenovo and others. And they make car batteries for EVs in China and SE Asia.
Albermarle - a Aussie company does about 1/3 of the worlds lithium mining.
SQM - a company out of Chile.
China - does the rest.
Each is responsible for ~ 1/3 of the worlds lithium production. Although SQM is on the downfall due to the referendum recently. And China is on the rise as companies like BYD are trying to really take over much of the larger lithium battery market, especially with EV cars but even laptops etc.
Most of this came from my own research for investment reasons.