Purity issues in the Battery industry is not acknowledged yet. The cheaper the better philosophy is still dominating

"Purity issues of Battery raw material are still for the industries a miner issue and mine Governance and processing is totally neglected"

The battery industry is in the battle of growth in the EV market share and energy storage. The Car industry is triggered by the aggressive market approach from Tesla and totally blinded to focus on the essential issues of quality and long term supply chain security. In the market all the engineers are talking about new battery formulas... from NCM (6-2-2, 1-1-1) to now 8-1-1 to reduce the usage and cost of Cobalt. 
Cobalt has achieved mid 2018 a price of USD 90,000/ ton, whereas the Cobalt prices originated from below USD 30,000/ ton. The industry is playing a childish move from left to right. The Industry really believes that Nickel is the answer. Nickel had a high price in 2007 with nearly achieving USD 60,000/ton and is now at below USD 20,000/ ton with a production of 1,7 million ton/ year today. Glencore stated that with an increase of 10% EV users the demand of Nickel will increase by 400,000 tons/ year. The Industry is not aware of such impact on the future pricing structure and with such basis the, Nickel prices will experience the same phenomenon like the Cobalt, a high price experience like in 2007 ? The industry has to focus on essential economical issues, such availability of raw materials, mine governance and investment cost for high purity products and the bond to the mining industry to negotiate stable platform prices. 
When I was speaking at the AABC battery conference in San Diego in June 2018 nobody was aware and seem to care of how the raw material is exploited and processed. Heap leaching is the cheapest solution to extract gold, silver, copper. There is sooner or later without doubt an impact on the environment and people. Artisanal mining has a bed impact on the environment and child labor. The DRC has finally realised that there is no mine standard applied and it is time to have a change. International traders buy such ore and have no idea of the origination and damage it has left to the country. The battery industry should be more carefully structured and push the mining and processing industries into the appreciation of people, environment, investment cost and purity levels of the products. 
Returning to the raw material and potential of the battery formula, it is clear that the manganese Cathode material has in comparison to Nickel, Cobalt, Aluminium a very low investment cost factor, of nearly 1/3 of nickel and cobalt and 1/8th of Aluminum. The Manganese is one the Father of the Lithium battery but due to the fast degrading of the Manganese it was replaced by the NMC battery formula. With new Anode material and solid electrolyte the manganese as a cathode material is reborn. 
All a great Day
Raymond Malcolm Oei, CEO STERN, oei@sternasia.com - WA +62811803531

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