2019 POSCO Chairman Jeong-Woo Choi visits the construction site of a lithium extraction demonstration plant in Argentina and encourages employees/POSCO
POSCO recently acquired the Argentine’Hombre Muerto’ in 2018, as the spot price of lithium carbonate in China surged from $5,000 per ton in July last year to over $11,000 per ton in February this year. )’It is predicted that the accumulated sales will reach 35 trillion won when producing lithium buried in Salt Lake and applying the current market price.
At the end of last year, POSCO confirmed that the lithium reserve in Salt Lake was 13.5 million tons, six times higher than the estimated 2.2 million tons at the time of acquisition.
The verification of lithium reserves was performed by Montgomery & Associates of the United States, the industry’s leading global salt solution lithium consulting company, in accordance with internationally recognized regulations. As the electric vehicle market is growing worldwide, including China, the price of lithium, an essential material for electric vehicle batteries, is expected to continue to rise. In addition to lithium, POSCO is actively investing in nickel, a key raw material for cathode materials that make up secondary batteries. Nickel, along with lithium, is a material that is directly connected to the performance of the battery.
POSCO plans to secure its own supply of nickel for batteries through recycling (recycling) projects using waste batteries and investments in nickel mines in Australia and other countries. In addition, in order to diversify the supply and demand of graphite, a raw material for anode material that is currently entirely dependent on China, it acquired a 15% stake in Black Rock Mining, an Australian mining company that owns a graphite mine in Tanzania, Africa.
Meanwhile, by 2030, POSCO will establish its own supply system for lithium, nickel, and graphite, which are raw materials for secondary battery materials, and POSCO Chemical plans to establish a production system of 400,000 tons of cathode materials and 260,000 tons of anode materials using these materials. Through this, POSCO Group plans to complete a material value chain that produces from raw materials to secondary battery materials, the only one in the world.