Tantalum miners threaten to expand Australia's biggest lithium mine

Melbourne - a trial date has been set to determine whether the growing western Australian mine, which has a stake in China's tianqi lithium, will unfairly affect its mineral rights, the partner of one of the world's largest lithium mines said on Monday.

Private equity backed GlobalAdvancedMetals (GAM) owns the rights to the tantalum and other minerals produced by greenplantation, the world's largest hard rock lithium mine, and has asked the court to stop plantation plans to make sure its rights are safe.

TalisonLithium is a joint venture between lithium giant lithium industry and AlbemarleCorp, the United States. Tianqi owns 51 per cent of Talison and abt 49 per cent.

Talison aims to double Greenbus's production by mid-2019 as its owners compete for more lithium to meet an expected boom in demand for electric car batteries. But any court injunction could delay mine expansion.

The October 16 solstice 31 trial date was set by the western Australian state Supreme Court, GAM said, further down the line by the company in July 2017 in its launch of the ban action mining processing Talison.

"It is GAM's strong view that Talison's expansion of lithium extraction and processing in greenbush... Greenbush threatens to waste tantalum, "GAMCEO Andrew o 'donovan said in a statement.

"" GAM, therefore, initiated legal action to ensure Talison's expansion was carried out in a manner that would identify GAM's rights to tantalum and other minerals." "

Tantalum is used in advanced electronic products, such as medical devices.

GAM, 80 per cent owned by private equity firm RCF, extracts tantalum as a by-product of lithium production and ships it to downstream plants in the us and Japan.

"We are in our legal position and remain confident during this period that as the expanding greenbush lithium operation becomes more and more successful on the job, creating hundreds of new jobs and building this remarkable contribution to the success of the western Australian economy," a Talison lithium spokesman said.

He confirmed that the mine's expansion plan is underway and will be completed in the second quarter of next year.

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