Chalk and cheese really.
All existing mines in Australia are "hard rock" producers - they mine rocks containing lithium-rich minerals such as spudumene, crush it, do some physical (not chemical) concentration of the lithium-rich mineral, and send it off to processing factories in China where the lithium-containing ore is chemically processed to produce lithium hydroxide or lithium carbonate.
Orocobre is a brine processor. Lithium-rich brines are pumped from below salt lakes into evaporation ponds where they are concentrated by evaporation over a period of around 9 months. The concentrated brine is then processed through an on-site chemical processing plant to produce high purity Lithium Carbonate directly.
The cost of production from brine is lower than from hard rock processing - ORE is one of the lowest cost producers in the world. So if Lithium prices were to tank, the hard rock producers would go out of business first.
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