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    Core Lithium’s Finniss restart: funding, price and schedule notes for mine planners

    May 20, 2026|

    Reviewed by Tom Sullivan

    Core Lithium’s Finniss restart: funding, price and schedule notes for mine planners

    First reported on MINING.com

    30 Second Briefing

    Core Lithium has restarted blasting and excavation at the Finniss hard-rock spodumene operation in Australia’s Northern Territory after securing a A$290 million funding package and benefiting from a sharp rebound in spodumene concentrate prices to their highest level in over two years. The staged restart targets first exports of spodumene concentrate in the December quarter, following Finniss being placed on care and maintenance in 2024 amid the lithium price slump that began in late 2022. The move coincides with Mineral Resources’ plan to restart the Bald Hill mine and renewed progress at Gina Rinehart–backed Andover with SQM.

    Technical Brief

    • Blasting and excavation have resumed at Finniss, implying renewed drill-and-blast, load-and-haul and pit dewatering operations.
    • Care-and-maintenance status in 2024 suggests prior mothballing of pits, processing plant and associated contractor fleets.
    • Hard-rock spodumene extraction at Finniss reactivates a conventional crush–mill–dense media separation flowsheet for concentrate production.
    • Spodumene concentrate pricing has rebounded to the highest level in over two years, improving pit cut-off economics.

    Our Take

    Within our lithium and spodumene coverage, Finniss in the Northern Territory is one of the few Australian hard-rock operations to cycle from care and maintenance back to restart in under a full price cycle, which suggests lenders see it as relatively resilient compared with more marginal Western Australian assets such as Bald Hill.

    The four-year company-wide production plan mentioned for Core Lithium aligns with the multi-year underground contract horizons at BP33, indicating that the restart is being framed as a medium-term supply source into spodumene concentrate markets rather than a short opportunistic response to the current price rebound.

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    Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.

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