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| POSCO Chairman and CEO Kwon Oh-joon poses with the company's first lithium carbonate powder produced at a POSCO factory in Gwangyang, South Jeolla Province, Tuesday. / Courtesy of POSCO |
By Jhoo Dong-chan
POSCO produces lithium for commercial use for the first time in Korea. The country's largest steelmaker has developed its own individual technologies in lithium production for the last seven years.
POSCO held a ceremony for the POSCO lithium extraction factory in Gwangyang, South Jeolla Province, Tuesday. Some 100 company and government officials, including POSCO Chairman and CEO Kwon Oh-joon, LG Chem President Lee Ung-beom, Samsung SDI CEO Cho Nam-seong and Gwangyang Mayor Jeong Hyun-bok, participated in the event.
"Despite the challenges lying ahead of the company, POSCO has relentlessly sought for vision and passion of its future growth engine," said Kwon.
"We expect to churn out not only lithium for rechargeable batteries but also future energy materials such as high-purity nickel anode and cathode at the newly-built plant."
The factory is expected to annually produce about 2,500 tons worth of lithium carbonate to supply to domestic secondary battery makers like POSCO ESM, LG Chem and Samsung SDI. The annual capacity is enough to manufacture batteries for some 70 million laptop computers.
"Korean secondary battery makers have depended entirely on imports of lithium carbonate since there was no domestic suppliers until now, but it won't be the case anymore," said a trade ministry official.
"Korea has top-notch secondary batter makers like LG Chem and Samsung SDI. The synergy POSCO would bring with the new factory will greatly contribute to their future production operations."
Last year, Korea met all of its lithium demands of 20,000 tons for secondary batteries via imports, and is expected to consume nearly 50,000 tons of lithium carbonate by 2020.
"POSCO will enhance the capacity of the factory to satisfy domestic demands," said a POSCO official. "POSCO plans to build another plants of its kind, aiming to meet the entire domestic lithium demands in a long term."
Last February, POSCO also started building a lithium production plant in Salta Province, Argentina.
Like the factory in Gwangyang, the Argentine production plant is also expected to produce 2,500 tons of high-purity lithium for secondary batteries per year once completed.
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