Core Lithium restarts operations at Finniss days after MinRes does same at Bald Hill

Core Lithium (ASX:CXO) has found itself in a similar boat to MinRes this week with the former restarting lithium mining operations at its Finniss Lithium Operation (FLO), days after MinRes recommenced works at its Bald Hill lithium mine.

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Both companies are responding to higher lithium prices, that commodity’s up +195% YoY according to a futures benchmark tracked by TradingEconomics.

While lithium prices are similar to copper this week in that they’ve handed back recent gains, by and large lithium (also like copper) has been able to shrug off Iran War headwinds in the last two months.

By and large, copper and lithium are similar in that they’ve both shown resilience to Iran War headwinds, and if you wanted to include Brent Crude in that mix, the three commodities are currently something of a trifecta.

Bullishness on copper prices helped BHP Ltd surge to record highs above A$62/sh in recent history (now pared back) and while MinRes shareholders remain cautious after Chris Ellison sold off a huge block of shares days after the Federal Budget, that stock’s sill up over +5% in the last week.

Core, too, reflected investor enthusiasm on Wednesday – at least what can be called enthusiasm on another dull day for the ASX after yet another dull night on Wall Street. Core Lithium shares were trading nearly +5% higher in the first hour of Wednesday trades to 32.5cps.

All in all, Core expects to be selling spod concentrate again “in the December quarter” with material from the Grants asset to be processed in the September quarter; this Core wrote on Wednesday should be a viable path to early revenue.

Should that prove to be the case, it could reflect a kind of regime shift for the company which saw its stock price plummet back in mid-2023 as the company mothballed operations when lithium prices sunk. Of course, one should be reminded of where lithium was then, and, where it is now.

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