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Events/Company founded · 1983

Greenbushes lithium production begins

Company founded, 1983, Australia.

What happened

Talison says Greenbushes and its predecessor companies have produced lithium minerals since 1983. Exploration in the 1970s found a 5 km pegmatite with tin, tantalum and spodumene. A tantalum market only existed after the 1905 invention of the tantalum filament lamp.1,2,3,4

Why it matters

Greenbushes is still a major lithium mine in the WA profile for 2023, with 51 per cent of State lithium output.1,2,3,4

Story cards

Around the same time

  1. Lithium brine production begins at Clayton Valley

    Brine is now the main source of lithium.5,6

  2. Greenbushes lithium production begins

    Greenbushes is still a major lithium mine in the WA profile for 2023, with 51 per cent of State lithium output.1,2,3,4

Open the full timeline

Where next

Mines

Located inGreenbushesSee the mine behind this story: Greenbushes.1

Events

Led toTin mining starts at GreenbushesThe lithium mine grew out of a tin field found by David Stinton in 1888.1

Places

Located inGreenbushesSee the place where this happened: Greenbushes.1

Sources

  1. Tin (Mining and Energy Western Australia exhibition) State Library of Western Australia
  2. About Talison Lithium
  3. WA Battery and Critical Minerals Profile, March 2024 Western Australian Treasury Corporation
  4. Greenbushes (item Q1826852), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  5. Lithium, Professional Paper 1802-K US Geological Survey
  6. Silver Peak (item Q3709766), coordinate location P625 Wikidata

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

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Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Super Pit, Kalgoorlie by Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pictures: Salar de Atacama, Chile, NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (Public domain (NASA media, no copyright)).