Lithium miners shake up trading

New gold: A mining engineer holds lithium at a project in Brazil. The commodity’s prices are coming out of a boom-to-bust period that left in its wake an array of stalled projects, scrapped deals and production cuts. — AFP

NEW YORK: The world’s lithium miners –facing an unprecedented demand surge and wild price swings – are shaking up the way the commodity is bought and sold.

As lithium emerges as a linchpin of the global energy transition, the industry is in the grip of a slow-motion revolution that earlier upended commodities like iron ore: a push for more transparent and industry-wide pricing.