Seeking to Create an EV Battery Material Value Chain
POSCO has decided to direct the group's capabilities at taking its secondary battery material business to the world's highest level. To this end, the company plans to speed up the completion of a value chain from the procurement of raw materials to production of battery materials.
"No company in the world, except POSCO, has an integrated system for supplying secondary battery materials from raw materials such as lithium, nickel, and graphite to cathode and anode materials,” POSCO chairman Choi Jung-woo said on Dec. 3. “Based on our differentiated competitive advantages, we will make our secondary battery materials business No. 1 in the world.”
POSCO has secured large quantities of lithium, which is used as a material for cathodes for secondary batteries. In November, POSCO asked U.S. lithium consulting firm Montgomery to evaluate the lithium reserves of Argentina's Hombre Muerto Salt Lake. Montgomery confirmed that the lithium reserves were 13.5 million tons, six times more than the 2.2 million tons estimated at the time of POSCO’s acquisition of the lake. The volume can be processed into batteries for 370 million electric vehicles (EVs). POSCO explained that lithium concentrations were very high at an average of 921 milligrams per liter, enabling the company to extract a lot of lithium from a very small amount of saline water.
POSCO will also push for production of high-purity nickel, an essential raw material for manufacturing cathode materials for high-capacity batteries. Based on its iron production and impurities removal technology used in the steel production process, the company will scale up investment in developing an eco-friendly high-purity nickel smelting process.
POSCO also laid out a plan to secure graphite mines in Africa and Australia to diversify the supply sources of graphite, a material for anode materials entirely imported from China these days. The company plans to reduce its heavy dependence on China to below 50 percent in the mid- to long-term.
POSCO is also planning to develop materials for all-solid-state batteries garnering much attention as a next-generation secondary battery. POSCO Chemical made a paid-in capital increase of one trillion won in November to invest in materials for secondary batteries materials.
POSCO plans to build a system to produce 400,000 tons of cathode materials and 260,000 tons of anode materials a year by completing a value chain for materials and supplying 220,000 tons of lithium and 100,000 tons of nickel annually by 2030 on its own. By doing so, the company also suggested its goal of achieving a 20 percent share of the global market and 23 trillion won in annual sales in the secondary battery material sector.