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RESEARCH

Global Lithium Market Surplus for 2025 Splits 10,000 to 141,000 Tonnes Across Analyst Forecasts

Mining · 2026-08-13 06:16

Three independent commodity research firms -- Fastmarkets, Adamas Intelligence, and S&P Global Commodity Insights -- published full-year 2025 global lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) surplus estimates that diverge by roughly 14x: from 10,000 tonnes (Fastmarkets) to 141,000 tonnes (S&P Global), with Adamas Intelligence's 115,000-tonne estimate landing closer to the high end. All three agree the market remains in surplus and that the surplus is narrowing from 2023's roughly 175,000-tonne peak, but they disagree sharply on how much slack remains before the widely forecast 2026 deficit arrives. For EV and battery supply chain planners, that gap is the difference between a comfortably oversupplied market and one mine disruption away from a price spike.

Findings

  • Fastmarkets 2025 lithium surplus estimate of 10,000 tonnes LCE is roughly 14x smaller than S&P Global Commodity Insights 141,000-tonne estimate for the same calendar year, despite both firms using LCE as a common unit.
  • Adamas Intelligence 115,000-tonne surplus estimate sits closer to S&P Global than to Fastmarkets, suggesting the disagreement clusters around one outlier low estimate rather than a uniform three-way split.
  • All three trackers agree on direction: the surplus has shrunk every year since peaking near 175,000 tonnes in 2023 (about 154,000 tonnes in 2024), and all three expect further narrowing or an outright deficit in 2026.
  • None of the three published figures publicly reconciles the demand-side assumptions (EV uptake pace, grid storage attach rates) that would explain the size gap, making the surplus figure alone a poor standalone number for procurement decisions without checking which forecaster demand curve underlies it.

Delta Engine result

↔ Divergence Detected — Δ 0.1111 (threshold 0.05)

Evidence quality

avg 40 · min 25 · max 70 · spread 45