China Magnesium Corp. Ltd. said Dec. 16 that its subsidiary CMC Commodities Pte. Ltd. entered a cooperation deal to get priority off-take rights to battery-grade lithium carbonate from China's Qinghai Hengxinrong Lithium Technology Co. Ltd.

Qinghai Hengxinrong Lithium owns a plant that extracts lithium brines from the Qinghai Salt Lake in western China, which has the capacity to produce 20,000 tonnes of battery-grade lithium carbonate per annum.

The parties will negotiate a formal supply-and-sales contract, under which Qinghai offered to supply an initial 1,000 tonnes of battery-grade lithium carbonate for delivery in mid-2017 at a commercially favorable price.