Since 2020 I have argued that the real problem with lithium is not only how much is produced, but who sets its price, with what information and under what interests. In 2025 I projected a range of between US$25,000 and US$40,000 per tonne. In 2026, the physical market reached US$24,000 and futures came close to US$30,000. It was no coincidence: it was method, structure and traceability
By Pablo Rutigliano
For years, the price of lithium was presented as an unquestionable figure that descended from a foreign screen and had to be accepted by producing countries as if it expressed a natural truth. While Latin America held a strategic share of the resources, the economic benchmarks, contractual terms and much of the purchasing power were organised far from the deposits, the communities and the economies that bore the productive risk. My approach was always different: the price could not be viewed as an isolated number. It had to be reconstructed from real supply, product quality, licences, contracts, inventories, processing capacity, logistics, buyer concentration and industrial demand. Before the word traceability became a repeated slogan, we were already arguing that without it there was no truly clean price, only a benchmark built by those with the greatest capacity to impose it.
In July 2020 we publicly promoted the creation of a specialised chamber and the development of our own index, together with a dollar-denominated market for spot and futures lithium contracts. That proposal did not arise during an extraordinary rally or after observing market behaviour: it was born when it was still being debated whether the region needed to build its own pricing architecture. The idea was for producing countries to stop merely receiving an external quote and begin generating contractual, economic and production information capable of supporting a regional benchmark. The goal was to connect production, financing, contracts and demand under visible rules. The archive shows that the proposal for the Lithium Index, digital contracts and the futures market did not appear in 2026 to explain a recovery that had already happened: it had been written since 2020.
In 2022 I deepened that thesis by arguing that price formation defined the sustainability of the entire lithium circular economy. It was not just about achieving a higher price. An opaque price harms both producer and manufacturer, discourages investment when artificially depressed and creates bubbles when it rises without relation to physical availability. That is why I proposed treating lithium as a strategic commodity, developing auditable digital contracts and building a regional price linked to the real economy. I also warned that an index should record changes in supply and demand, visualise trends and allow the region to understand future movements before they were interpreted by external players.
In March 2023, when a marked slowdown in prices began, I wrote that the decline could not be analysed solely as a structural loss of demand. I pointed to the concentration of purchasing power in large Asian operators and traders, the difficulty of separating industrial demand from speculative moves and the market’s inability to clearly show the spot and future price of lithium carbonate. While many interpreted the drop as the end of a cycle, my analysis warned that there was strong demand, but conditioned by a concentrated commercial architecture and the absence of transparent data. The debate was not simply whether the price was falling or rising; the question was who held enough information to trigger, manage or take advantage of that move.
Throughout 2024 I insisted that the price of lithium was shaped by a geopolitical dispute. The concentration of refining, China’s industrial capacity, technological dependence, regulatory decisions and the competition over batteries made it impossible to treat the market as a perfectly competitive space. That position was often dismissed as an overinterpretation. However, subsequent behaviour confirmed that a mining licence in China, an export decision in Africa or an operational disruption in Australia could quickly change global expectations. The price did not respond only to an academic supply and demand curve: it responded to a physical, regulatory and geopolitical chain that had to be traced from end to end.
On 29 March 2025, a projection linked to my analysis was published placing lithium carbonate within a potential range of between US$25,000 and US$40,000 per tonne. The estimate was conditioned by the energy transition, e-mobility, storage, regulations, the behaviour of major international players and the evolution of supply. It did not claim that the price would advance in a straight line or that volatility would disappear. On the contrary, it warned that competition over batteries, government policies, new technologies and production adjustments could exert strong upward as well as downward pressure. The projection was not an intuitive bet: it was the conclusion of a structural reading that had been developed publicly for years.
In June 2025, Atómico 3 publicly presented the Atómico 3 Lithium Index, conceived as a tool to observe market developments and project scenarios. It set out a horizon of US$34,800 per tonne, within a growth path driven by battery demand, supply constraints, geopolitical tensions, regulation and the need to improve traceability. To be rigorous, that target should not yet be presented as fully achieved: its horizon remains open and the physical price has not yet reached that level. But what has happened since cannot be ignored either: the market left behind values below US$10,000, broke through US$20,000, reached US$24,000 in the physical market and approached US$30,000 in futures. The anticipated direction began to materialise and, even more importantly, it did so through the mechanisms we had identified.
In March 2026, Cochilco reported that the price had reached US$20,750 per tonne, up 84% from the close of 2025. The agency attributed the move to tighter supply, especially the shutdown of the Chinese Jianxiawo deposit, linked to CATL, and Zimbabwe’s ban on exporting unprocessed lithium ore and concentrates. Months later, battery-grade lithium carbonate hit a ceiling of US$24,000 per tonne, the highest level since late 2023, while the average May price rose 12.8% from April. Cochilco stated that the market had left behind the lows of aggressive oversupply and was beginning to enter a more balanced phase, with support near US$17,500.
The futures market confirmed that shift even more strongly. On the Guangzhou Futures Exchange, prices came close to US$30,000 per tonne before correcting and closing May with an average of around US$27,430. This means that futures effectively entered the US$25,000 to US$40,000 range published in 2025. It does not mean the market has definitively consolidated those levels, nor that a new correction is impossible. It means something more relevant: faced with concrete and verifiable supply constraints, the market quickly began to recognise a value far higher than the one it had held during the oversupply phase.
Nor did the recovery happen solely because electric vehicle sales increased. The new cycle shows a profound transformation of demand: battery energy storage systems are starting to take centre stage, driven by renewable energy, the need to stabilise power grids and the expansion of data centres linked to artificial intelligence. Cochilco projects that the BESS segment will grow by more than 160% by 2030. This confirms one of the structural ideas I have held from the start: lithium does not depend on a single application or a technological fad. It is part of the energy, digital and industrial infrastructure the world is building.
The real confirmation, therefore, is not only that the price has risen. An analyst can get a price right by chance. What is significant is having identified in advance the architecture that would produce the move: concentration of purchasing power, contractual opacity, regulatory restrictions, limited processing capacity, delays in new projects, geopolitical tension and growth in energy demand. When China halted production over regulatory non-compliance, Zimbabwe restricted unprocessed exports and Australia faced operational adjustments, verifiable supply contracted. The price reacted. That is exactly what a traceability architecture seeks to measure: not only how much a tonne is worth, but which events, contracts, decisions and constraints built that value.
The region must understand this signal. Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and the rest of Latin America cannot merely celebrate a recovery while continuing to accept benchmarks formed without sufficient participation by producers. The next step is not to manipulate the price or build a closed cartel. It is to develop transparent indices, standardised classifications, digital contracts, technical certifications, verifiable information on production and inventories and audit mechanisms that reduce asymmetries. A clean regional price does not mean inventing a convenient figure; it means demonstrating with data why the resource is worth what it is worth.
Traceability plays a decisive role here. It connects geological origin with technical analysis; analysis with the concession and the project; the project with production; production with the contract; the contract with export; and export with the final price. Without that sequence, the price is an incomplete snapshot. With it, the price becomes a verifiable consequence of the economic process. That is the difference between observing the market and understanding it.
Since 2020 I have proposed an index and a contracts market. In 2022 I explained that price formation determined the sustainability of the chain. In 2023 I warned about buyer concentration and the impossibility of seeing real value. In 2024 I described the geopolitical dimension. In 2025 I projected a range of between US$25,000 and US$40,000. In 2026, the physical price reached US$24,000 and futures approached US$30,000 due to supply constraints in China, Africa and Australia.
It was not an isolated phrase. It was not a prediction written after the rally. It was a public, dated and verifiable sequence.
The market may be slow to recognise a theory. Publications remain, dates endure and traceability makes it possible to reconstruct the path. The price eventually moves; the archive shows who had understood beforehand why it would.
