Albemarle stares down barrel of Gina Rinehart shotgun wedding
Albemarle boss Kent Masters likes to joke that he runs a company full of chemical engineers and is still learning the ropes when it comes to mining.
The head of the battery chemicals giant has done a bit of sparring with Western Australia’s special breed of mining billionaires over the past few years.
Mining billionaire Gina Rinehart’s ambitions in lithium appear to go well beyond Kathleen Valley. Getty
The wealthiest of them all – Gina Rinehart – now stands between Albemarle and an unfinished lithium prize it deemed worthy of an indicative $6.6 billion takeover offer in September.
Getting Liontown Resources chairman Tim Goyder on-side with a sufficient price after being rejected three times was the first battle. Making its Liontown deal stack up with no hope of taking full control of the asset is the next.
Masters has also been tested with on-off dealings around lithium processing, where Albemarle is historically adept, with another Perth billionaire in Mineral Resources boss Chris Ellison.
What, some wonder, is Rinehart doing in lithium after a $1.3 billion spending spree on Liontown shares that gave her the whip hand in deciding the future of Albemarle’s prize and its flagship Kathleen Valley project in WA’s northern Goldfields?
For Australia’s richest person, it is about making even more money.
It is understood Rinehart will be happy to do that alongside Albemarle, which cannot match her Pilbara expertise but is a global force in refining and marketing battery chemicals.
And if Albemarle finds the idea of working with Hancock unpalatable, Hancock is prepared to look to other partnership options, or simply exert its influence as Liontown’s newest major shareholder with a 19.9 per cent stake.
Rinehart’s ambitions in
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