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Houston, Texas–(Newsfile Corp. – November 21, 2019) – Wall Street Nation announces publication of an article that discusses E3 Metals Corporation (TSXV: ETMC) (OTC Pink: EEMMF), a lithium development company with 6.7 million tonnes lithium equivalent (LCE) inferred mineral resources in Alberta
China Still Wants Electric Vehicles to Make up a Fifth of Auto Sales by 2025
By 2025, China wants electric vehicles to make up a fifth of its auto sales.
To help make that a reality, the country introduced subsidies and tax incentives for the production and purchase of electric cars over the years. While it managed to fuel industry growth, it also created an over-crowded field of automakers. In fact, earlier this year, there were a total of 486 EV manufacturers, more than triple from two years earlier.
To combat that growth, China was forced to cut incentives and subsidies. All in an effort to now promote “the survival of the fittest,” noted CNN. That has now led to a sales slump, with suffering automakers blaming a significant reduction in subsidies. The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers just said that sales of electric, hybrid, and fuel cell cars plummeted more than 45% in October, marking four straight months of declines.
Lithium prices have fallen on the story, as well.
Producers have made more lithium than automakers need at the moment. Global supply exceeds demand by about 5% today, according to Reuters.
Eventually, this will give way to sizable opportunity.
As near-term lithium prices have dropped on oversupply concerns, producers have cut back on increasing supply. However, when the EV market begins to recover, and companies are short on supply, the supply-demand story will become a major catalyst for lithium prices.
Major companies such as Albemarle expect for lithium supply-demand issues to tighten by 2020, as noted by Mining Weekly. In addition, according to Benchmark Intelligence, as noted by The Washington Post, lithium could move into a deficit, as lithium use jumps leading into 2023.
Granted, the lithium market is facing challenges now. However, that could soon change.
E3 Metals Corporation is a Diamond in the Rough
E3 Metals Corporation is sitting on the sixth largest lithium resource in the world.
At 6.7 million tons of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) – and at an average grade of 75 milligrams per liter – the resource has been shown to be one of the largest.
However, what makes E3 Metals’ story even more compelling is Livent Corporation, which announced they would contribute to E3 Metals’ development of lithium extraction (DLE) technology. All with the goal of producing battery quality lithium products from lithium enriched brines in the Leduc Formation in Alberta.
With DLE technology, the companies can remove lithium directly from brine solutions, “eluting it into new higher concentration/purity streams that can be easily processed into battery quality lithium chemical products,” according to Chris Berry and Alex Grant, per a LinkedIn report.
“This means that brine with the lithium removed can be reinjected into the ground, preventing the disintegration of aquifers as seen in Chile’s Salar de Atacama, eliminating years of processing time and dependency on the weather, reducing reagent consumption, reducing environmental footprint, and significantly slashing CAPEX for the project,” they added.
Better, the company just announced the collection of a large volume lithium-enriched brine sample from the Leduc Formation in the Alberta Lithium project area. In fact, this 20,000 L brine sample is the largest collected to date. It is required to support the continued testing and scale up of E3 Metals’ proprietary direct lithium extraction (DLE) process over the next 12 months.
“E3 Metals has been working with the oil and gas industry throughout our project development to date,” stated E3 Metals CEO, Chris Doornbos. “Leduc Formation brine is a byproduct to the oil and gas industry in Alberta and E3 Metals sees tremendous value in this lithium-enriched brine through the planned commercialization of its proprietary DLE process. The brine will be utilized as part of our ongoing technology scale-up program under the Joint Development Agreement with Livent Corporation.”