POSCO Holdings has started construction of a plant to commercialize brine lithium in Argentina. The POSCO Group is Argentina's first to produce lithium hydroxide for batteries through the entire process, from acquisition of mining rights to exploration to construction and operation of a production plant.

 

The US$830 million project calls for the establishment of the plant near the Salar del Hombre Muerto salt lake in northern Argentina, with an annual production capacity of 25,000 tons of lithium hydroxide.

 

The plant is expected to be completed in the first half of 2024, and the capacity is enough to meet demand from 600,000 electric vehicles, according to POSCO.

 

The annual output will be expanded to produce up to 100,000 tons by 2028.

 

In May last year, POSCO, the world's fifth-largest steelmaker by output, also broke ground on a plant in South Korea to extract lithium hydroxide, a key material for electric vehicle batteries.

 

The plant will have an annual production capacity of 43,000 tons of lithium hydroxide, which is enough to manufacture about 1 million electric vehicles, according to POSCO.

 

Initially, POSCO estimated that the site had 2.2 million tons of lithium reserves. But the site was later confirmed to contain 13.5 million tons of lithium reserves, which is enough to make batteries for about 370 million electric cars, according to POSCO.

 

POSCO Group plans to become one of the top 3 global companies in lithium production by 2030 based on the brine, hard rock, and recycling of waste batteries at the group level including POSCO Argentina, POSCO Lithium Solution, and POSCO HY Clean Metal, centered on the parent company, POSCO Holdings. On the 14th, POSCO JK Solid Solution, a joint venture with Jeong Kwan Co., Ltd., began using its solid electrolyte production technology on the first solid electrolyte production line. The process uses lithium in expanding the battery material business to the next generation of solid state batteries.