Albemarle boss still in the market for Liontown

afr.com:

Albemarle chief executive Kent Masters considers the battery chemical giant’s $5.5 billion bid for aspiring lithium producer Liontown Resources a live offer, despite no meaningful discussions between the two parties for the past five months.

“I would say it’s a standing offering. We’ve not pulled it,” he said on Wednesday of the spurned $2.50 a share bid. The Tim Goyder-chaired Liontown is getting on with building what will be its flagship Kathleen Valley mine, having rejected its suitor in March.

Albemarle boss Kent Masters meets workers at the company’s lithium hydroxide plant at Kemerton in WA. Sarah Henderson

Albemarle is also happy to have parted ways with Chris Ellison’s Mineral Resources in a lithium processing venture in mainland China.

Mr Masters clarified Albemarle’s sprawling WA strategy following a visit to the company’s lithium hydroxide plant at Kemerton, south of Perth, on Tuesday.

Albemarle has signed off on doubling the size of Kemerton to 100,000 tonnes a year in a move that will take its lithium processing investments in WA past $4 billion. It is building a $140 million accommodation village at Australind, south of Kemerton, to house the 1000 workers needed for the expansion.

The New York-listed company remains on the hunt for more lithium mines, and is willing to invest from the exploration stage to mines already in production.

Mr Masters said parting ways with MinRes on their processing joint venture while they remained co-owners of the Wodgina lithium mine suited Albemarle. The revised deal resembles Albemarle’s co-ownership with China’s Tianqi and IGO Limited in the world-class Greenbushes mine that supplies Kemerton.

“We had a joint venture, and there were parts of it I didn’t like and parts of it