BOLIVIA: Will Go It Alone To Produce Lithium Battery.

BLOOMBERG/ By CARLOS VALDEZ /
      President Evo Morales admits that he has been unable to find a foreign partner to help manufacture lithium batteries. So, he says, Bolivia will do it itself, investing about $900 million and starting production in 2014.
    But so far, the nation has not even moved out of the pilot phase of lithium production.
     Bolivia holds the largest known reserves of lithium, the world's lightest metal used for batteries in cell phones, laptops and other electronics and autos.
     Morales' talks so far with Bollore of France, Sumitomo and Mitsubishi of Japan and LG of Korea as well as Iran have been fruitless.
   "They only want to invest to buy lithium carbonate," Morales reports, referring to the compound used in batteries. But "we need partners for the industrialization of lithium batteries in Bolivia."

BOLIVIA: New Reserve Has Potential To Disrupt Lithium Markets.

BLOOMBERG/ In-Depth Story/
The world’s largest potential lithium reserve, enough to make batteries for more than 4.8 billion electric cars, is located in Bolivia. But Bolivia has NEVER built a lithium mine. But if Evo Morales builds mines, he will rock a market controlled by just two companies: New Jersey-based Rockwood Holdings and Santiago-based Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile SA, or Soquimich. These companies produce about 70 percent of the world’s low-cost lithium in Chile.

BOLIVIA: Lithium Suitors Show-off Technologies.

LAHT/
Nine foreign companies hoping to join in a project to exploit Bolivia’s massive new lithium reserves demonstrated their technologies in La Paz.
Bolivia plans a pilot plant in the southwestern town of Uyuni in 2010 that will produce lithium carbonate – a key ingredient in batteries that power laptop computers, cell phones and other devices – before building a larger plant in 2013.