You're absolutely right. They have stated that publicly, that they're now looking to Canada to supply the critical materials. They are opening up all these battery plants. There will be about 20 of them. There are currently 20 battery plants in construction in the United States and they don't even know where the actual input is going to come from. On the mine we're bidding for, there are two Americans that are completely backed by the U.S. Department of Defense or by the federal government to come and buy the lithium from this project.
When we see all these announcements and we think it's great, and Mr. Biden and all the billions of dollars, because they're all going electric, they're turning back to us.
We don't have a problem. We don't have a battery plant here in Canada, but at least let's sell them finished products.
We mine lithium. We turn that into spodumene. We sell it at $600 a tonne. We turn that into lithium hydroxide, which is $14,000 a tonne. Do you see the difference?
The foreigners who are trying to buy the mine are not going to do the hydroxide here. They'll do it in North Carolina, in Australia, in China, whereas we're saying, no, we're building the hydroxide line in the plant immediately and we'll sell that.
Right now, hydroxide is $14,000 a tonne and people think it will go to $30,000. Spodumene will go from $600 to $800.