REUTERS: EVE Energy, a Chinese battery company, announced on Friday that it would buy a stake in a small lithium producer and form a joint venture to develop a lithium chemistry project worth up to 1.8 billion yuan (US$277.8 million). This is EVE’s newest attempt to obtain chemicals for electric vehicle batteries, such as lithium. It had previously acquired a modest investment in cobalt producer Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, as well as a 17 percent share in a US$2.1 billion nickel and cobalt project in Indonesia with Huayou.
In an exchange filing, EVE, located in Huizhou, southern China, said it wanted to buy 28.1 percent of Jinkulun Lithium Industry Co, which produces lithium metal in China’s northwestern Qinghai region, which is known for its lithium salt lakes.
According to EVE, the two businesses agreed to form a Qinghai-based joint venture with Jinkulun owning 80% and EVE owning 20% of a factory that will produce 30,000 tonnes of battery chemicals lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide each year.
It said that the first-phase output would be 10,000 tonnes, with a total project construction schedule of no more than 36 months.
The cooperation, according to EVE, is “conducive to increasing the company’s supply chains’ stability” and might lessen the negative impact of raw material price changes.
Prices for battery-grade lithium carbonate in China have declined approximately 2% in the last month, but are still up more than 65% so far in 2021 as demand surges after a three-year slump, according to Asian Metal.
(Tom Daly contributed reporting, and Edmund Blair edited the piece.)/n
