Let's work together: miners look for price stability

Lithium heavy hitters Liontown and PLS have talked up the potential of working together to solve the price volatility that has smashed miners in recent years.

Liontown managing director Tony Ottaviano and PLS chief Dale Henderson both expressed support for a joint effort to come up with a more mature price mechanism that would shield them from Chinese market manipulation of the price of the battery metal.

Speaking at the annual Diggers and Dealers mining forum in Kalgoorlie on Tuesday, Mr Henderson said the lithium industry was still nascent and lacked the market trading structures in more mature sectors like iron in coal.

"So where that ultimately goes, I think, is probably the major participants of the industry pulling together to help resolve that," he said.

The lithium market lacks a well-developed futures trading market, meaning prices are mainly determined via opaque private contracts.

Developing a spot trading platform would increase liquidity and price transparency, helping iron out the wild price swings the market has suffered in recent years, Mr Henderson hoped.

Fellow lithium giant Mineral Resources has previously called for a spot trading market to boost transparency.

Mr Ottaviano said he was in favour of whatever it took to see a transparent and stable lithium price.

"I'm very much encouraged by what Dale says," he said.

"You cannot have a price like lithium on Friday go up $60 a ton, on Monday drop $60 a ton, or in the last three months drop 30 per cent.

"How do you respond? It's very difficult to turn a ship in such a rapid time."

The rapid market turnaround had driven Liontown down 70 per cent in two years, while PLS was two-thirds lower over the same period.

But after oversupply caused the price of lithium-rich spodumene to plummet about 90 per cent from its 2023 peak, the commodity has recently stabilised.

China was beginning to crack down on its supply glut to protect the sustainability of its own industry, Mr Ottaviano posited.

"We're starting to see government policy to move private enterprise and state-owned enterprises away from this maniacal push for capacity at the detriment of economics," he said.

Mr Henderson said it was hard to determine whether the lithium price had bottomed out.

"It's hard to call given what we've seen in the market historically, with a disconnect to the fundamentals," he said.

The pair saw further upside for demand, through a pick-up in the use of robots and home batteries, with Mr Ottaviano predicting demand could catch up with supply in as little as one year.