Chile holds the world's largest lithium reserves in the Atacama Desert; its 2023 state-majority nationalization model, pairing Codelco with SQM, defines the global critical-minerals sovereignty debate.
The world's largest lithium producer by volume, US-listed Albemarle operates brine and hard-rock assets across Chile, Australia, and the United States that form the backbone of Western EV battery supply.
full dossier ›Producers and processors: the fifteen miners and refiners who set the critical minerals supply floor
From Chilean brine fields to Congolese copper pits, fifteen companies mine and refine the lithium, copper and cobalt the energy transition depends on.
Selective lithium recovery from brine without solar evaporation ponds, achieving over 90% yield; the technology reshaping lithium supply in Chile, Argentina, and the US Smackover Formation.
The lightest solid metal and core material in EV and grid-storage batteries; China refines roughly 70% of global output, making lithium the central critical-mineral security flashpoint of the energy transition.
China's Tianqi Lithium holds 51% of the world's largest hard-rock lithium mine and 23.77% of Chilean SQM, a structural swing factor in global battery supply chains.
Project Lonestar (250 tpa, Hooks TX) processes Smackover brine using EnergyX's GET-Lit technology; a Wildcat JV will co-locate a 15,000 tpa LFP cathode plant; DLE market is valued at $1.54 billion in 2026
A March 2026 EPA Record of Decision unblocked North Carolina's first domestic hard-rock lithium production since the 1980s; Albemarle idled Kemerton and filed a $3.1 billion DLE proposal in the Atacama