Nickel Mattes

POSCO Holdings announced on May 3 that it will invest US$441 million (about 590 billion won) to build a new nickel smelting plant in Wedabay Industrial Park on Halmahera Island in Indonesia, ranking first in nickel reserves and production.

POSCO Holdings will produce 52,000 tons of nickel mattes at the plant. Nickel mattes are an intermediate product made by smelting nickel, with a nickel content of 70 to 75 percent. This is an amount good enough to make batteries for one million electric vehicles and the company plans to start the plant’s commercial production in 2025.

As the world’s number-one country in nickel reserves, Indonesia offers tax incentives and industrial park infrastructure support to attract foreign investment. The country is promoting an industrial upgrade across its entire nickel production value chain.

POSCO Group is building a 20,000-ton-per-year high-purity nickel plant for secondary batteries in Gwangyang, South Jeolla Province, Korea by receiving nickel ore from Nickel Mining Company (NMC), a New Caledonian raw material corporation. In 2021, POSCO acquired a 30 percent stake in Ravensthorpe, an Australian nickel mining and smelting company, to secure a supply chain for Australian nickel. The company plans to secure 220,000 tons of nickel by 2030, including recycling waste batteries from POSCO HY Clean Metal in Gwangyang and producing precursors for its Chinese precursor joint venture.

Copyright © BusinessKorea. Prohibited from unauthorized reproduction and redistribution