But you’re somewhat tempered in your ability to do that because to produce real high-quality lithium hydroxide that the customer is willing to commit to — they want a commitment from you that you’re not just going to be speculatively moving it at the hydroxide market. And so, we do see the hydroxide markets bringing more price stability. We do see the hydroxide market and we’ve seen this certainly this year but offering a meaningful premium over carbonate most of the time doesn’t mean the carbonate market is not quite capable of becoming incredibly tight and having some real price spikes that blow past hydroxide at times absolutely will happen, just don’t see it as a long-run sustainable position to be. I also think there are opportunities.
I think we can learn from people like Allkem who are focused more on producing volume in these markets than necessarily worrying too much about it all being battery grade because there isn’t always a massive price difference in carbonate between battery grade and non-battery grade. To be clear in hydroxide there isn’t really a market for non-battery grade hydroxide, really not of any scale. So it’s got to be battery grade or nothing but these are all the factors that we continue to think about including by the way through the metals chain as I’m sure you know by starting with chloride we have that other branch we can head down and produce chloride based chemicals as well metals and others. And so I think this is going to become in the future Chris an increasingly complex operating model and I and I think it’s which is a good thing because I think it really reflects the fact that there’s opportunities for us to be constantly optimizing our profitability per LCE while at the same time having a differentiated footprint in what we think will be the highest value market which is lithium hydroxide.
Chris Kapsch: That’s a helpful color, I appreciate it. And then just to follow up on that there was — the engagement with your customers is just curious if it feels like that the demands for urban Asia skew towards carbonate and in North America that you know like for example the engagement with Ford SKUs hydroxide? Or is that an over simplification do you think they’ll be a bifurcation in that direction or not necessarily? Thank you.
Paul Graves: I think the engagement with the major OEMs is very much hydroxide driven, right because I think they see that as the area that requires the most involvement by them to make sure that they have reliable secure supply chains. I think they have a little bit more confidence that carbonate will be available for their carbonate based batteries and to be clear all of them have both high and low nickel battery models out there and running. I think in terms of by region it’s a little bit more complicated, because I think a lot of the really high nickel high quality cathode plants are in Korea and Japan, but there’s still a lot in China too. I think a lot of the carbonate based low nickel I mean it’s all in China frankly so you sort of have this weird dynamic that if you’re taking carbonate into a battery chain it’s almost certainly going into China whereas hydroxide does actually have more places that it can be processed into the high nickel applications.
Chris Kapsch: Thank you.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Kevin McCarthy with Vertical Research Partners. Your line is open.
Kevin McCarthy: Thank you. And good evening. Would you provide an update as to the percentage of your lithium hydroxide business that you’ve entered fixed price contracts for 2023 and also 2024 if you would?
Paul Graves: Yes, so as we’ve disclosed about 70% of our lithium hydroxide this year is contracted and the price has been fixed for 2023. At 2024 pricing the majority of that is still largely up for discussion with those customers. It almost certainly will be fixed for next year but it will not be fixed at 2023 prices.
