Albemarle (NYSE: ALB) and its partner Mineral Resources (ASX: MIN) will speed up the restart of production at their jointly owned Wodgina lithium mine in Australia to respond to "unprecedented" demand for the battery metal.
The companies, which modified in February their ownership of Wodgina to make it a 50-50 split, now expect first spodumene concentrate production from Train 1 operations in May. They have previously pencilled out to start producing in the third quarter of this year.
Mineral Resources and Albemarle, the world no.1 lithium producer, also agreed to accelerate a restart of Train 2, from which first production is expected in July.
Each train has a nameplate capacity of 250,000 tonnes, Mineral Resources said in the statement. The companies, which have been working together in the Wodgina mine and the Kemerton lithium hydroxide conversion trains in the Pilbara region of Western Australia since 2019, also will assess timing to start on Train 3 and a possible construction of Train 4.
A decision on the matter will be based on global lithium market conditions later this year, they said.
Operations at the Wodgina mine were halted in late 2019 because of then-weak markets, but the companies have been working to resume production at the site in recent months.
Albemarle is also a joint venture partner to China's Tianqi Lithium to develop the Greenbushes mine and processing plant in Western Australia. The US miner's main operations, however, are in Chile's north.
Mineral Resources also announced that is upgrading the processing facilities at its Mt. Marion hard rock lithium mine, a 50-50 joint venture with China's Jiangxi Ganfeng Lithium.
The project expected to boost Mt. Marion's spodumene concentrate production capacity from 450,000 tonnes per annum to 600,000 tonnes per annum this month.
A second stage of expansion incorporating a dense media separation (DMS) plant upgrade, a new crushing circuit and an upgrade to the mine camp, should increase installed plant capacity to a run rate of 900,000 tonnes a year by the end of 2022, the company noted.
Located 40 km southwest of Kalgoorlie, in the Goldfields region of Western Australia, Mount Marion contains the world's second biggest high-grade lithium concentrate (spodumene) reserves.