The lithium industry is expected to grow rapidly in the near future due to developments in batteries and aircraft alloys, both of which require large quantities of pure lithium metal. This expansion will transform the lithium industry from predominantly chemical to predominantly metallurgical. With this growth, a question arises as to whether the current lithium industry can cope with an increasing demand for high purity lithium metal. While the resources for lithium are abundant enough to satisfy world demand for many decades, new processes must be developed to produce both high tonnages and high purities. Toward this end, several new extractive processes have recently been proposed.