Australia based Altech Chemicals Limited has announced that it has executed an option to purchase agreement for a ~10 hectare industrial site within the Schwarze Pumpe Industrial Park, municipality of Spreetal, Saxony, Germany. This follows an official invitation that it received from the State Government of Saxony, Germany in September 2019 for the Company to consider building its next high purity alumina (HPA) plant in Saxony.

 

The agreement provides Altech with an initial 12-month term during which it can exercise its purchase option, with the ability to extend the option period by a further 12-months via mutual consent. The purchase price for the site is confidential, however on a per-hectare basis the price is considerably less than comparable brownfields industrial sites in Malaysia or Western Australia. During the option period Altech will have access to the site for planning and assessment purposes. Altech is investigating the site as a preferred location for a second HPA plant, specifically to service forecast demand for HPA from Europe’s burgeoning electric vehicle and renewable energy battery sectors.

 

The Schwarze Pumpe Industrial Park is located in north-eastern Saxony and is well serviced by existing infrastructure including reticulated electricity and natural gas, rail and roads. The industrial park is 120 km from Berlin and only 78 km from Dresden. Saxony is a state which hosts production sites for Volkswagen, BMW, Porsche and Damler. The region is a leading engineering training ground and has excellent research facilities like the Fraunhofer Institute for Electronic Nano-systems which are very focussed on ceramic (HPA) nano technology in energy storage. 

 

Managing Director, Iggy Tan said that “whilst we have been focussed on completion of finance and the continuation of construction of Altech’s first HPA plant in Malaysia, the increased fiscal support for the EV and renewable energy sectors recently announced by the EU and Germany, combined with the forecast HPA supply deficit in coming years, has prompted us to move and secure this excellent HPA plant site in Germany – albeit earlier that I had anticipated. A HPA plant takes 4-5 years to design, permit, fund and construct. To meet the forecast HPA supply deficit Altech needs to be pro-active and put in place a plan for its next plant today, whilst staying extremely focussed on the first facility in Johor".