[defrost]

Fact? <cough>

Australia will sell the raw resource ( hard-rock spodumene ) to anyone that wants a X-year contract - it's on them to process the concentrate (although we are currently building out spodumene processing).

  Australia has one of the biggest lithium reserves, and is the biggest producer of lithium by weight, with most of its production coming from mines in Western Australia.

~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_mining_in_Australia

There's also Chile:

  Lithium mining in Chile is the second largest in the world in terms of extraction after it was surpassed by Australia in 2012. Chile, like Argentina and Bolivia, is located within the Lithium Triangle, an area of South America that houses the largest known reserves of lithium on the planet. 

~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_mining_in_Chile

It might pay to brush up on mineral resources, processing, and global trade patterns before over confidently launching into faux-facts.