Lithium: An Overview

Panorama 2011 du marché du lithium

Jean-François Labbé and Georges Daw ()
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Jean-François Labbé: BRGM - Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières
Georges Daw: CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: This report, produced within the framework of a 2011 agreement between the Ministère de l'Ecologie, du Développement Durable, des Transports et du Logement (MEDDTL) and the Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières (BRGM), provides an overview and economic and geologic outlooks of the global lithium market. It is in line with both the economic issues around the access of European and French companies to raw materials -whose prices have experienced a worrying global uptrend for a decade-, and less cyclically with the authorities' demand for information about current developments in the world of raw materials (thereby, the Committee for Strategic Metals-COMES during its inaugural thematic seminar in December 2012 had chosen lithium as the substance and this report had then provided a exchanges between participants). The report begins with a summary. After a presentation of the substance, the subject of a second section, it deals in turn with the state of current and future uses and global demand for lithium. The fourth section lays out the state of current and future global lithium supply. Supply issues are inseparable from the examination of lithium production sources and processes, resources and reserves as well as their spatial distribution, technical substitutions and recycling. In a fifth section, we examine lithium prices, their evolution and, for information, the financialization around this substance. A sixth section recaps the current and possible global and French industrial players in the production, recycling and use of lithium for the production of semi-final or final goods. In the seventh section, the data from the Ministry of the Economy and Finance concerning French international trade in lithium as well as semi-final or final lithium-based products are reproduced. Finally, on the basis of a survey by the Compagnie Européenne d'Intelligence Stratégique (CEIS) a qualitative assessment of the issue of criticality of the substance for the French economy is provided. Additional quantitative investigations to this last question are in progress.

Keywords: Criticality; Lithium; Resources and reserves; Production; Consumption; Prices; Raw materials strategy; Réserves; Ressources; Minéraux lithinifères; Saumures; Matières premières minérales; Criticité; Approvisionnement; Prix; Consommation; Marché; Stratégie des matières premières; Politiques publiques; Criticité. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-07-27
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00809298
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Published in [Rapport de recherche] Bureau de recherches géologiques et minières [BRGM]; Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne [CES]. 2012

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