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Well, pull out the party hats and dust off the stock tickers.
Lithium, the commodity that investors and analysts had all but left for dead in the great market purge of 2023-2024, is back.
It’s truly shocking. Who could have possibly predicted this?
I mean, aside from absolutely everyone who has looked at a car, a phone, or a renewable energy grid in the last five years.
Let’s all cast our minds back to the ancient history of... 12 months ago.
The lithium market was awash in oversupply. Prices were in freefall.
Pundits warned of a long, cold winter for battery metals. It was, by all accounts, a "bust."
And now, in 2025, it’s a boom. The whiplash is enough to give an investor vertigo.
What caused this stunning, completely unforeseeable turnaround? Apparently, a few "minor" trends that the market collectively forgot about.
First, it turns out people are still buying electric vehicles.
In fact, projections for 2025 are somewhere in the neighborhood of 18-20 million units.
It seems that the "clean energy transition" thing wasn't just a phase.
Add in the rapidly expanding Battery Energy Storage System (BESS), also known as big batteries needed to keep the lights on from solar and wind, and you’ve got a real, genuine demand spike.
Governments in the US, EU, and China are even—get this—passing policies to encourage this.
Groundbreaking.
But the real genius of this 2025 resurgence isn't just the demand side.
It's the supply side, which just performed a masterful (and painful) act of self-correction.
After producers spent 2023 flooding the market, the subsequent price crash forced the inevitable: in 2024, high-cost producers and environmentally questionable facilities (particularly in China) shut their doors.
It turns out that when you stop making something that everyone suddenly needs, prices go up.
Spodumene concentrate, which was begging for a buyer at $610/tonne in mid-2024, is now fetching around $760/tonne.
It's a miracle. It's called "supply and demand."
Nowhere is the renewed euphoria more palpable than on the Australian Stock Exchange.
ASX-listed miners are the toast of the town, again.
Pilbara Minerals, which saw its share price evaporate in 2024, has rocketed back over 200% from its lows.
Why?
Because it focused on (gasp) cost control and locking in long-term sales.
Liontown Resources has finally pushed its massive Kathleen Valley project to commercial scale, securing dance partners like Tesla and LG Energy.
Names like Core Lithium and Allkem are back on investors' "buy" lists.
Everyone’s a genius again.
Of course, the bandwagon is now at full capacity.
The Australian government, recognising a critical mineral when it sees one (again), is earmarking $2 billion for downstream battery development.
J.P. Morgan, seeing the parade, has upgraded its price outlook, sparking yet another rally.
And M&A is heating up, as major players scramble to buy the very projects they wouldn't touch 18 months ago.
The great lithium resurgence of 2025 is a fantastic lesson in the market's breathtakingly short memory.
We're building battery megafactories worldwide for a commodity we nearly declared worthless.
The clean energy transition is inevitable.
But based on this cycle, it’s clearly going to be the most nauseating, volatile, and whiplash-inducing revolution in history.
Welcome back to the party, folks.
Try not to break anything this time.