Even in a year when almost every commodity has rallied hard, the soaring price of lithium stands out. Lex got it wrong by asserting that this thinly traded metal might have peaked back in March. Instead, lithium has nearly tripled to about $35,000 a tonne.
True, Lex may simply be early, as with iron ore. That was another metal that we thought would depreciate, which it eventually did. Either way, some navel-gazing on what happened in both markets this year is in order.
The reason to question lithium’s price hinged upon supply. Rocks that contain traces of lithium, as with so-called rare earth metals, exist in abundance — even though the difficulty of extracting the highly reactive metal restricts the supply. Moreover, demand forecasts do not exceed expected supply even with surging electric vehicle demand for batteries, according to Tom Price at Liberum.