Arizona Lithium’s Prairie Project reports lowest operating costs among global lithium projects

Last week, Arizona Lithium released the pre-feasibility study (PFS) for its Prairie lithium project in Saskatchewan, Canada, highlighting low operating costs of US$2,819 per ton of Lithium Carbonate Equivalent (LCE), which positions the project among the lowest-cost producers globally.

Key to the project’s appeal is the financial figures for its Phase 1 production of 6,000 tons per annum (tpa) of LCE, with a projected capital expenditure of US$290 million, based on a long-term lithium carbonate price assumption of US$21,000 per ton. Chief Technology Officer Brett Rabe confirms the company’s plan to begin Phase 1 production by 2025, scale up to 20,000-25,000tpa under Phase 2, and further expand in Phase 3.

The project has started a direct lithium extraction (DLE) pilot testing, which produced over 6,000 liters of high-grade lithium concentrate and demonstrated a 95.6% extraction rate. Additionally, the project has recently reported a 10.5% increase in resources, totaling 6.3Mt of LCE.

While the company shows promising figures and confidence in production plans, no potential or binding offtake agreements have been disclosed.