Glencore has moved upstream in lithium with a deal to help fund the restart of a mothballed mine in the Northern Territory and has claimed credit for bringing other heavyweight investors along for the ride.<\/p>\n
Core Lithium will fire up its mothballed Finniss mine about 90km from Darwin thanks to $US120m ($169m) in backing from Glencore, InfraVia and Nebari Natural Resources, and a planned $120m equity raise.<\/p>\n
Glencore claimed credit for bringing Paris-based wealth fund InfraVia and US-based mineral investment manager Nebari into the deal.<\/p>\n
\u201cGlencore structured the entire transaction and invited partners InfraVia and Nebari to co-invest alongside us,\u201d a spokesman said.<\/p>\n
The Finniss mine was the first in Australia to be shut down when the last lithium winter started to bite. Its closure in early 2024 was followed by others and hundreds of job losses.<\/p>\n
Big producers like PLS and Chris Ellison\u2019s Mineral Resources are now ramping operations back up and Gina Rinehart-backed Liontown aims to boost production<\/a> in response to a big turnaround in pricing.<\/p>\n Core boss Paul Brown said the company expected to hire more than 300 workers as production resumed.<\/p>\n The Glencore support is in the form of a $US20m convertible note and gives the Swiss-based mining conglomerate marketing rights for five years.<\/p>\n Glencore is already a major force in lithium marketing in Australia and is estimated to handle about 7 per cent of the global market.<\/p>\n Gary Nagle-led Glencore has shown some appetite for direct involvement in lithium mining and struck a similar, albeit much bigger, $US400m deal to market 50,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate a year produced by Eramet in Argentina.<\/p>\n Glencore said it had also moved upstream with other deals that remained private.<\/p>\n In the case of Core, InfraVia\u2019s contribution is a $US50m convertible note while Nebari has put up a $US50m loan.<\/p>\n InfraVia founder and chief executive Vincent Levita said: \u201cLithium is a critical component of the global energy transition, and investing in reliable sources of supply is essential to the development of resilient battery and electric vehicle supply chains. <\/p>\n \u201cThis investment is fully aligned with the strategy of our critical metals fund.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr Brown said all three backers were interested in having equity in Core.<\/p>\n He stopped short of declaring the era of lithium mines opening and closing in Australia<\/a> was over, given the volatile nature of the market dominated by China.<\/p>\n Core will restart mining with a clean slate on offtake after the lapse of previous deal with Chinese entities.<\/p>\n