Topic: How To Invest

Pat: What is your opinion on Nemaska Lithium? Thanks.

Article Excerpt

Nemaska Lithium, $0.17, symbol NMX on Toronto, (Shares outstanding: 188.7 million; Market cap: $32.1 million; www.nemaskalithium.com), aims to bring its Whabouchi project in Quebec into production. Lithium is used in batteries, glass and ceramics, lubricants, refrigeration, pharmaceuticals, polymers and aluminum production. But the metal mostly goes into lithium-ion and lithium-metal batteries for electric and hybrid-electric cars. Whabouchi holds a deposit of spodumene, which is a hard rock that was once the most important lithium source. But most of today’s lithium comes from brine solutions drawn from salt lakes, such as the Chabyer in Tibet and the Salar de Atacama in Chile. This is cheaper than producing lithium from spodumene and other sources, and the recovered metal is suitable for most uses. However, when the purest lithium is needed, producers look to spodumene because the final product has fewer contaminants. Nemaska plans to ship ore from the mine to a processing plant it aims to build in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Quebec. This facility will transform spodumene…