Kent Masters

In the first weeks of 2025, lithium prices remained deep in a cyclical trough. Chinese oversupply had crushed spot markets, project pipelines were being deferred across the industry, and Western conversion economics looked uncompetitive. Yet Kent Masters, Chairman and CEO of Albemarle, was still talking about long-term volume growth. The world’s largest lithium producer was not walking away from the energy-transition thesis. It was simply refusing to build new capacity at prices that destroyed returns.

The stance was deliberate and, to some, frustrating. Albemarle controlled some of the lowest-cost, highest-quality lithium resources on the planet—the Salar de Atacama brine in Chile and the Greenbushes and Wodgina hard-rock operations in Australia. Masters’ message was clear: the company would compete at the bottom of the cycle through cost and productivity discipline, preserve optionality on growth projects, and wait for demand from electric vehicles and stationary storage to reassert itself. Critics saw caution bordering on paralysis. Supporters saw the only rational response from a company that intended to remain a long-term supplier rather than a cycle casualty. The controversy was the familiar one of timing: how long could even the best resources wait for the market to recover?