Korean Lithium Battery Materials Company is ambitious
Foreign media reported that South Korea’s Posco is constructing its global lithium battery raw material supply chain to meet its subsidiary Posco Chemical’s continuous increase in orders for positive and negative electrode materials and production expansion of raw material supply requirements, and reduce the amount of raw materials for my country. The procurement of raw materials such as lithium and graphite is dependent on it. Pohang Chemical, a subsidiary of POSCO, is a major supplier of positive and negative materials for Korean battery companies such as LG Chem, Samsung SDI, and SKI. The above-mentioned battery companies are expanding the production of power lithium batteries on a large scale globally, and there is a strong demand for positive and negative materials, which provides a good opportunity for the further development of POSCO's lithium-ion battery materials business. Currently, Pohang Chemical is actively expanding its production of positive and negative materials. In terms of cathode materials, Pohang Chemical has completed the second phase expansion of a 25,000-ton production line at its cathode material plant in Gwangyang City, Luonan Province, increasing the factory’s output from the previous 5,000 tons to 30,000 tons. Including the 10,000 tons output of the Gumi Plant, Pohang Chemical currently has an annual production capacity of 40,000 tons of cathode materials. Pohang Chemical also plans to further increase the output of its Gwangyang plant to 90,000 tons per year, which is enough to produce 60KWh battery packs for 750,000 electric vehicles. At the same time, POSCO has also established joint ventures with companies such as Huayou Cobalt and Samsung SDI to produce ternary precursors and ternary cathode materials. In terms of anode materials, in November 2019, Pohang Chemical announced an investment of 125.4 billion won (approximately RMB 750 million) to expand its anode material output to 66,000 tons per year. In April 2020, Pohang Chemical announced an investment of US$178 million (approximately RMB 1.26 billion) to expand the production of artificial graphite anode materials by 16,000 tons. Currently, POSCO has used the lithium-ion battery materials business as the company's next growth engine, and plans to achieve a sales target of US$20.9 billion (approximately RMB 136.5 billion) by 2030. Under such circumstances, ensuring a stable supply of raw materials and reducing procurement costs have become the key to POSCO's realization of its strategic goals. In terms of guaranteeing the supply of upstream lithium raw materials, POSCO acquired the Salardel Hombre Muerto salt lake (Salardel Hombre Muerto) under Galaxy Resources (ASX: GXY) at a price of US$280 million in 2018. The mine is an expert of Galaxy Resources in Argentina. Grade SaldeVida project. A few days ago, POSCO said that the Hombre Muerto salt lake has 13.5 million tons of lithium reserves, six times the original estimate of 2.2 million tons, and enough to meet the lithium salt demand for 370 million electric vehicles. In 2019, POSCO announced the construction of a 40,000-ton lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate plant in South Korea with Australian lithium miner Pilbara. The project will use Pohang’s self-developed 'PosLX' purification technology to remove salt lakes. The lithium recovery rate of lithium extraction is increased to more than 80%. In terms of graphite materials, POSCO plans to obtain more graphite mines from Africa and Australia to ensure the diversification of its graphite supply, so as to reduce its dependence on my country's graphite raw materials procurement. The plan is to reduce its dependence on my country's graphite materials in the future. To less than 50%. Posco said that it plans to produce 220,000 tons of lithium and 100,000 tons of nickel each year by 2030 to ensure that its Posco Chemical can produce 400,000 tons of cathode materials and 260,000 tons of anode materials by 2030, and will be used in South Korea, Power lithium battery plants in my country, Europe and the United States supply lithium-ion battery materials.