POSCO Chemical to secure captive lithium hydroxide supply of 93,000 mt/year by 2024

South Korea's POSCO Chemical expects to secure captive supply of 93,000 mt/year of lithium hydroxide by 2024, sufficient to meet all its requirements for manufacturing cathode materials, the company said March 25.

"If the lithium produced by the POSCO Group is supplied, POSCO Chemical will be able to procure all of the 91,000 mt of lithium necessary for the production of 225,000 mt of cathode material per year in 2024, and the self-sufficiency rate is expected to reach 102%," the company said, suggesting the supply will be 2% more than its requirement.

The projected capacity will be provided by a $830 million lithium hydroxide plant at the Salar del Hombre Muerto salt lake in northern Argentina that POSCO Holdings began building March 23.

POSCO Holdings was set up on March 2 after the POSCO Group switched to a holding company system and spun off the steelmaking arm. POSCO Chemical and POSCO Argentina are subsidiaries of the holding company.

The Argentina plant is expected to be completed in the first half of 2024 with an initial output of 25,000 mt/year, increasing to 50,000 mt/year by end-2024. The plant's capacity is expected to double to 100,000 mt/year by 2028.

The remaining 43,000 mt/year capacity will be provided by a 43,000 mt/year plant at Gwangyang, South Korea that is scheduled to begin construction over second-half 2022, with operations expected by October 2023.

"... the POSCO Group plans to continue expanding the lithium business by increasing the lithium production capacity of the Argentine salt lake to 100,000 mt/year in connection with POSCO Chemical's investment plan for cathode materials," the chemical subsidiary said.

Lithium is the most widely used commodity among cathode materials. About 0.46 mt of lithium is required to manufacture 1 mt of cathode material for high-performance electric vehicles.

The projected 93,000 mt/year of lithium hydroxide is sufficient to power about 2.2 million electric vehicles.