Lithium News

News and Information

Battery Metals

President Jokowi ‘confident’ Tesla will invest in Indonesia

February 3, 2023 By News Team

Indonesian President Joko Widodo is confident Tesla Inc will finalize a deal to invest in a production facility in his country, having offered the US car maker incentives ranging from tax breaks to a concession to mine nickel.

Southeast Asia’s largest economy has been wooing Tesla to invest in battery and car manufacturing since 2020, seeking to leverage its rich reserves of nickel ore, which can be processed for use in EV batteries.

The president, widely known as Jokowi, has held talks with Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk twice, meeting him in person at his SpaceX facility in Texas last year and a telephone call, to try to secure a deal.

“I said to him that if you invest in Indonesia, I will give the concession of nickel,” Jokowi said, referring to Indonesia’s offer of a mining concession.

Other incentives include tax breaks and a subsidy scheme on EV purchases to build a market for Tesla in the world’s fourth most populous country, he said, adding that his ministers were finalizing the subsidies.

The president said he was “confident” Indonesia had the edge over other countries Tesla might be considering for investment because it has the largest nickel reserves and a big domestic market.

Jokowi said it was up to Tesla to take up the offer to mine nickel, underlining that Indonesia is open to investment in the EV battery and electric car supply chain.

“If they want to start from EV battery, it’s OK,” he added.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tesla is looking for an additional manufacturing hub. The company currently manufactures EVs in four locations: Fremont, California; Shanghai; Austin, Texas and outside Berlin. Analysts estimate that Tesla would need to build seven or eight more “gigafactories” to meet Musk’s target of selling 20 million electric vehicles by 2030.

In addition to Indonesia, South Korea, Canada and Mexico have been vying for Tesla to invest in manufacturing. A spokesman for Mexico’s president said on Tuesday that Tesla was considering setting up an assembly plant near a new Mexico City airport.

Analysts have said Mexico could have an edge to win the Tesla investment because of the proximity to its main market in the United States, an established supply base for components and because vehicles built there could qualify for Biden administration consumer tax credits.

Possible first for Asia

If Tesla were to invest in battery production in Indonesia, it would be its first facility of that kind in Asia. Last month, the company announced a $3.6 billion investment to expand battery production at its Nevada factory.

Jokowi banned the export of nickel ore in 2020 to encourage investors to build a vertically integrated supply chain for batteries and EV, using the metal as a raw material.

The ban has brought in big investments in nickel smelting, mostly from China, but has also been challenged at the World Trade Organization by the European Union, which says the ban was unfairly harming its stainless steel industry.

The WTO last year ruled in the EU’s favor but Indonesia is appealing.

Indonesia has also seen rising interest in investment in EV or battery production, with South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Co and LG Energy Solution already building EV and battery plants.

Indonesian officials last year said Tesla has signed contracts worth about $5 billion to procure materials for their batteries from nickel processing companies.

How a Soviet nuclear site could be key to Europe’s EV market

February 2, 2023 By News Team

On the edge of Sillamae, a town of just over 12,000 people in northeast Estonia, sits a grassy hill with a secret.

It’s here, on the Baltic Sea coast close to the Russian border, where the past is buried. And it’s here, according to one company, where the future lies if Europe wants to loosen China’s grip on the supply of components to industries seen as critical to the continent’s economy.

The artificial mound covers a radioactive pond from when the town covertly processed uranium for the Soviet nuclear industry until 1989. Today, the adjacent facilities are home to oil and fertilizer storage terminals, but also the only major processing plant outside Asia for rare earth metals used in the automotive industry.

The plant’s Canadian owner, Neo Performance Materials, says the knowledge honed in the remote region over decades is now key to nurturing a European industry for magnets, particularly for electric vehicles. Backed by the Estonian government, Neo plans to build Europe’s first rare earth magnets manufacturing site next door to Sillamae, which will provide the processed raw materials needed to make them.

“You look at the whole of Estonia — 1.4 million people is the size of a small city anywhere else in the world — and yet it has the potential to become an innovation hub for critical materials for all of Europe,” said Constantine Karayannopoulos, Toronto-based Neo’s chief executive officer.

The vision may sound grand, but rare earth metals are in demand and incredibly niche. They are a set of 17 elements from the periodic table and have hundreds of uses, from missiles to banknotes.

The biggest is for making incredibly powerful magnets, which make up about 90% of the market’s value worldwide, according to the industry’s lobby group. Chinese companies dominate production while US and European capabilities have shriveled in the face of cheaper competition over the last three decades.

The electric car industry is going to need a lot more magnets in coming years as the European Union moves to ban internal combustion engines by 2035. The challenge in Europe is sourcing the raw material and then convincing customers it’s worth paying a premium on Chinese products, said Nabeel Mancheri, secretary general of the Rare Earth Industry Association in Belgium.

Neo’s previous owner, Molycorp Inc., was one of several firms that shut down production. It previously attempted to build a mine-to-magnet supply chain — like Neo is now attempting — but failed, partly because of often wild price fluctuations in the rare earth metals market.

“In Europe, it’s a problem of capacity,” said Mancheri. “Magnets is not rocket science. The only problem is that you need to have a close collaboration with supply chain partners from the upstream to the downstream.”

China’s overwhelming sway over rare earths has become more concerning for Western companies after the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and blockages on the Suez Canal exposed the vulnerabilities of supply chains.

Europe’s automotive industry is now establishing its own production of everything from semiconductors and batteries to the lithium used inside them. The region is not just in an accelerating race with China, but also the US, where President Joe Biden is luring manufacturers with some $370 billion worth of clean-technology subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act.

Companies are also eager to see more localized and ESG-compliant supply chains of magnets and are putting pressure on Neo to establish that capacity, said Karayannopoulos. He said his company is in talks with all of the major electric vehicle drivetrain suppliers, including Robert Bosch GmbH, Schaeffler Group, Siemens AG, Stellantis NV and Tesla Inc.

There are manufacturers “screaming for this European supply chain capability,” said Karayannopoulos, who co-founded Neo 30 years ago. “They expect their tier-one suppliers to respond.”

Neo makes tantalum, cerium, lanthanum, neodymium, praseodymium — materials for automotive, aerospace, microelectronics — in Sillamae. It has about 70% of the market in neodymium magnets outside of China, according to Yuri Lynk, a Montreal-based analyst at Canaccord Genuity. It recently bought exploration rights to a mine in Greenland and also owns magnet plants in China and Thailand.

At the moment, the company has to ship materials processed in Estonia to those facilities in Asia, only to transport the finished product back to customers in Europe. The new €100 million ($106 million) Estonian facility that will be built in Narva, a Russian border city 25 kilometers (16 miles) east of Sillamae, is supposed to solve that.

It will make a magnetic powder essential for electric vehicle drivetrains and the company aims to have it up and running in 2025. The target is to produce 1,500 tons a year initially, worth €150 million in revenue, Karayannopoulos said. At full capacity, it could produce 5,000 tons. To put that into perspective, it would meet demand for all of Europe’s 1.7 million electric vehicle registrations in 2021, he said.

“I don’t think they’d build the plant if they didn’t see the demand there,” said Lynk, the analyst. “They’re a small company, but the market that they’ve traditionally dealt with is a small market.” Neo’s shares have risen 24% since mid November, shortly after it announced the Estonian government would back the new plant with an €18.7 million EU subsidy.

A handful of Neo’s competitors is seeking to build up rare earths capabilities outside of Asia, but most don’t have the head start thanks to the Sillamae facility.

In California, MP Materials, a company that owns the only major rare earths mine in the US, is aiming to build a supply chain. It’s ramped up production so that the US is producing more rare earth minerals than ever before. But the country lacks the refining and magnet-making capabilities, which MP Materials is now trying to fix by building a refinery at its mine and a magnet factory in Texas.

“For the entire industry, the primary driver of growth is traction motors for electric vehicles,” said Matt Sloustcher, a senior vice president for communications at MP Materials.

With refining and production capabilities “systematically offshored and hollowed out” in the US and Europe, MP Materials says the industry has to be rebuilt from the ground up. “China is dominant across mining, refining and the production of metals, alloys and magnets,” said Sloustcher. “And so from a resiliency point of view, that’s a weakness in the global supply chain. That is a threat.”

In Sillamae, the former uranium extraction plant was built by prison labor in the aftermath of World War II. It was sold off by the Estonian government after the tiny nation declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The covered “Uranium Lake,” which sits less than 50 meters from the Baltic shore, remains contaminated with about 12 million tons of waste.

The town was seen as essential for the nuclear industry back in the day, said Tonis Kalberg, Sillamae’s mayor. Now he talks about renovating the seaside promenade, sailboat rentals and fishing for tourists.

“The whole town was built for the purpose of this plant,” Kalberg said in an interview at his office in the town hall. “It was a closed town. The plant was secret.”

In Narva, which like Sillamae is mainly Russian-speaking, the advent of the new plant would be a timely boost to the city of 54,000 after the war in Ukraine hit the cross-border economy. Estonia’s industrial heartland has long been in decline, precipitated most recently by plans to wind down production at oil shale-fueled power plants, which employ thousands in the region.

Katri Raik, Narva’s mayor, is hopeful that Neo’s plans come through. She’s been fielding calls from an HR company inquiring about kindergartens for Neo employees. The city’s new slogan is “Europe Starts Here.” “We need to applaud the investors who come here next to Russia,” she said. “It’s up to us to convince them they made the right decision.”

Are metals headed for a golden age?

February 1, 2023 By News Team

Gold prices could break an all-time high in 2023 and the outlook for “every single metal on the periodic table” is incredibly bullish, which could be very good for the junior exploration sector.

Those were some of the prognostications Monday at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference, which followed on the heels of last week’s Association of Mineral Exploration (AME) Roundup conference, attended by close to 6,000 people from around the world.

Many base metals, especially critical minerals and battery metals, are riding the energy transition wave, while gold could get a boost from economic upheaval and uncertainty and a general under-investment in new production.

“I don’t think there’s been a more interesting time than right now for mining, and mining metals, in my entire career,” said Ross Beaty, founder of both Equinox Gold (TSX, NYSE: EQX) and Pan American Silver (TSX: PAAS).

“There are synchronous bullish conditions for virtually all metals … including precious metals, including base metals, including ferrous metals, non-ferrous metals, rare earth elements. Just about every single metal on the periodic table is in a good place right now, where people want them, demand is increasing, and supply is not increasing, by and large.”

There has been a general under-investment in new supply for many metals, including gold, and increased demand, including from a number of central banks, which have been buying larger quantities of gold.

“The dearth in new discoveries, and the necessity of mining companies to replace their reserves is real, and I think we’re going to see a generally a pretty good year,” said Brent Cook, exploration analyst for Exploration Insights.

“I agree that we’re entering into a reliable commodities moment,” said Gwen Preston, publisher of Resource Maven. “There are some that are better than others. I really love copper and I really love silver, which I consider a base metal, and I like gold.”

In 1980, gold prices soared to above $800 per ounce in response to a sequence of economic trends that sound eerily familiar today: an energy crisis, high inflation, rising interest rates and recession.

But a major rally in gold prices expected in 2022 didn’t happen the way some had expected. Lobo Tiggre, CEO of Louis James LLC research newsletter, said investors generally seemed to have confidence in the Federal Reserve System in the US to address things like inflation. As that confidence wanes, people could return to the old safe haven that is gold, pushing up its price.

“Team Transitory has become Team Soft Landing,” Tiggre said. “I think that’s going to blow up. I do think that confidence will go away. And I do think that will be a big boost for gold this year.

“I’m happy to go on the record and say, ‘Yes, I think we’re going to see higher gold prices this year — significantly higher gold prices.’ I think a new nominal all-time high is an easy target to hit.”

Rick Rule of Rule Investment Media noted that the current market share of gold relative to all other assets in the US is below one half of one per cent, whereas the four-decade mean has been two per cent.

“I believe that gold will revert to the mean…which will result in a four-fold increase in market share and an increase in demand,” he said. “I don’t think the World Gold Council needs to spend a dime to cause that to occur. I think it’s going to happen all by itself.”

As for how ordinary investors can own gold, ETFs are one way, though Rule said he personally owns physical gold, not to mention investments in gold exploration and mining companies.

“I think anybody who is concerned about maintaining their purchasing power needs to own the real thing,” he said. “They need to own some gold.

“If you are a speculator and can afford financial and psychological risk, then as a speculation – not insurance – work real hard and buy some juniors.”

Philippines may tax nickel exports to follow Indonesia’s success

January 31, 2023 By News Team

The Philippines is considering taxing nickel ore exports among options to push miners in the world’s second-biggest supplier of the metal to invest in processing instead of just shipping raw minerals, a route that top nickel producer Indonesia has taken and succeeded in.

“We want to move out from being just part of the supply chain. We want to be part of the value chain,” Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Antonia Yulo Loyzaga said in an interview in her office on Monday. Without facilities to process mineral ore, “we will just be a vendor country. And we don’t want to be a vendor country,” said Loyzaga, who’s also in charge of the mining sector.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s government is seeking to boost mining to further grow the economy that posted its strongest expansion in nearly five decades last year. With less than 3% being mined of 9 million hectares identified by the Southeast Asian nation as having high mineral reserves, the potential is huge. “We are open for business,” said Loyzaga, who assumed her post in July.

“There’s a range of actions including a progressive look at taxing exports” of raw nickel to boost investments in processing facilities here, Loyzaga said, adding that the agency’s Mines and Geosciences Bureau had earlier suggested for the Philippines to “go by way of Indonesia.”

Indonesia and the Philippines are the world’s biggest suppliers of nickel – used in making stainless steel and a key component in batteries for electric vehicles – to top market China. But Indonesia banned exports of metal ores in 2020 and limited shipments to refined products, boosting its nickel exports from $3 billion to $30 billion in two years as Chinese companies built refineries and smelters there.

Inspired by Indonesia’s success, Trade Secretary Alfredo Pascual said the agency is weighing whether to impose an export tax on raw nickel exports or ban ore shipments completely. While acknowledging concerns about “resource nationalism,” Loyzaga said the Philippines needs “to balance the pace at which we are going to be opening up this sector and make sure that we are not going to be running short.”

The Philippines has 55 metallic mines and seven mineral processing plants, including two for nickel operated by Nickel Asia Corp, which is partly owned by Japan’s Sumitomo Metal Mining Co. Loyzaga said her target is to add three more mineral processing facilities during her term.

The country’s nickel output dropped 17% to 22.5 million dry metric tons in January-September, according to the latest available government data. But Loyzaga says she expects shipments to rise this year amid “great demand” for nickel.

After overseeing a crackdown early in his term that shut most of the Philippines’ mines, Rodrigo Duterte, Marcos’s predecessor, who once said the nation can survive without a mining industry, eventually allowed new mineral deals and lifted a ban on open-pit mining in 2021. “So far we have assessed them and found them to be mining responsibly,” Loyzaga said on how mines are operating currently.

The government is talking with some large-scale miners from Canada and Australia that are keen on doing business here, she said, declining to give further details. At home, it is also pushing for mining projects stalled for years by changes in mining policy, including the Tampakan mine in southern Mindanao island.

The mine, one of the largest untapped mineral resource in Southeast Asia and estimated to yield 375,000 tons of copper and 360,000 ounces a year of gold in concentrate over a 17-year period, had been halted by the open-pit mining ban, prompting Glencore Plc to quit the project in 2015.

Loyzaga is scheduled to meet with local Mindanao officials this week and is hopeful any further hurdles for Tampakan will be cleared. “We need to move forward,” she said.

Zinc8 gets $9 million grant to establish zinc-air battery production facility in New York State

January 30, 2023 By News Team

Canada’s zinc-air battery developer Zinc8 Energy Solutions (CSE: ZAIR, OTC: ZAIRF) has been approved for a grant from Empire State Development of up to $9 million as an incentive for the company to establish its first US-based production facility in New York State.

The grant is part of a new framework announced by Governor Kathy Hochul, whose goal is for the State to achieve 70% renewable electricity by 2030, a nation-leading six gigawatts of energy storage and 100% zero-emissions electricity by 2040. This would represent at least 20% of the peak electricity load of New York State.

“Zinc8 intends to make a significant investment over a five-year span to automate and build out the site, making this Zinc8’s US headquarters and initial production facility,” the company said in a media statement. “Further to the build-out, Zinc8 plans to create up to 500 clean jobs over this period for the local economy with the support of the Excelsior Jobs Program tax credits.”

The Excelsior Jobs Program provides job creation and investment incentives to firms in targeted industries such as biotechnology, pharmaceutical, high-tech, clean technology, green technology, financial services, agriculture and manufacturing. Firms in these industries that create and maintain new jobs or make significant financial investments are eligible to apply for up to five tax credits.

“We’re excited by the level of support and interest we’ve received towards locating a manufacturing facility and creating jobs in the state of New York,” Ron MacDonald, CEO and president of Zinc8, said in the brief. “The EJP tax incentives offered to companies looking to create jobs and help build a green economy is an additional layer of funding that can be utilized concurrently with other financing, including state, municipal and federal funding packages which help companies like Zinc8 access additional sources of capital and expand their business plans.”

According to MacDonald, these incentives have made it logical for the company to select New York State for its first manufacturing facility.

Back in September 2022, the CEO announced that Zinc8 would be setting up its first manufacturing operations in the US, a direct result of the Federal Government’s passage of the Inflation Reduction Act which provides refundable tax credits for Zinc8’s production of its zinc-air energy storage systems.

Zinc8’s proposal

Zinc8 proposes a battery or modular storage system designed to deliver power in the range of 20kW – 50MW with a capacity of eight hours of storage duration or higher.

In this battery, energy is stored in the form of zinc particles, similar in size to grains of sand. When the system is delivering power, the zinc particles are combined with oxygen drawn from the surrounding air. When the system is recharging, zinc particles are regenerated, and oxygen is returned to the surrounding air.

To get started, the system takes power from the grid or a renewable source and uses it to generate the zinc particles in a section called the ‘zinc regenerator.’

The zinc regenerator consists of two electrodes. During recharge, the regenerator undergoes an electrolysis process in which an external electrical load is applied to energize one particular electrode on which zinc is deposited. Simultaneously, oxygen evolves from the other electrode. Subsequently, a proprietary method is used to remove zinc from the electrode and transfer it to a fuel storage tank.

When the zinc particles stored in the tank are required -because power is needed-, they are delivered to the ‘power stack,’ where they are recombined with oxygen to generate electricity. The zinc oxide (ZnO) by-product is returned to the storage tank for later regeneration. Thus, there is no net consumption of zinc.

GM Switching To Cylindrical Battery Cells

January 29, 2023 By News Team

A report by South Korea’s TheElec claims that General Motors is planning to stop using pouch cells in its future electric cars and switch to cylindrical cells. The move has caused some stress in the relationship between GM and its primary battery supplier, LG Energy Solution. The two companies are have already agreed to jointly construct and operate three battery factories in the US. One is already in operation in Ohio and two others are under construction — one in Michigan and the other in Tennessee.

A fourth factory was planned for Indiana, but this latest decision seems to have put that plan on hold. The talks between GM and LGES about that plant have ended, sources tell TheElec, and GM is reportedly reaching out to at least one other battery manufacturer, as yet unnamed.

There are precious few details available but the information TheElec got from its sources in South Korea is that General Motors will use the 4680 format cylindrical cells first used by Tesla. Cylindrical cells may be somewhat easier to manufacture than pouch cells, since the production techniques have been in use since the Carter administration, which could make them a lower cost option at a time when battery materials prices are rising.

The 4680 Cell

Kyle Field introduced CleanTechnica readers to the Tesla 4680 battery cell in September of 2020. He wrote that the new form factor eliminates the tabs, increases energy density, maintains similar thermal characteristics of smaller cells, improves the power-to-weight ratio, streamlines manufacturing, and lowers cost. That’s a lot of good reasons to use them. In January, 2021, we gave our readers an inside look at the 4680 battery manufacturing process Tesla is using.

At that time, Iqtidar Ali wrote, “One intriguing idea behind the 4680 cell is its 80 mm height which enables continuous motion cell manufacturing — similar to bottle production at beverage companies. This speeds up cell production compared to current procedures practiced at Giga Nevada’s cell manufacturing facility.”

Since then, every one and his cousin has been jumping into the 4680 format battery cell game. Panasonic, Tesla’s partner at the Nevada Gigafactory, got busy right away by designing a prototype 4680 cell for Tesla. Kazuo Tadanobu, head of Panasonic’s energy business, said in October, 2021, “We have developed this because of the strong desire of the other party, and we think this can only lead to stronger ties.” That may be so, but it also gives Panasonic a leg up on the competition to supply similar batteries to other companies.

CATL is the world’s largest battery manufacturer and it hasn’t exactly been standing still while Panasonic eats its lunch. Last March, it introduced what it calls its Kirin battery pack which Wu Kai, chief scientist for CATL, said has 13% more power than a battery pack using 4680 cells. It’s not that the individual battery cells are more powerful, it’s that CATL’s third generation cell-to-pack technology squeezes more power into the same space occupied by a 4680 battery pack.

The secret is in the packaging, not a new breakthrough in battery chemistry. Wu said the Kirin battery leads the industry in system weight, energy density, and volumetric energy density. “We have analyzed the range distribution of passenger cars in the last three years and found that consumers’ quest for long range is still a trend,” he added.

Since then, Tesla has found that scaling up production of its 4680 batteries is taking somewhat longer than expected. Being first out of the gate does not mean being first across the finish line. Meanwhile, last June, Samsung SDI announced it too would manufacture battery cells that are 46 millimeters in diameter, but would offer them in both 40 millimeter and 60 millimeter lengths, which would give automakers more choices when designing electric cars.

TheElec reported at the time that companies could stack two levels of 4640 cells one on top of the other to create a dual level battery pack. While that arrangement may be somewhat heavier and cost more than a single layer of 4680 cells, it could offer other benefits such as better control of battery cell temperatures within the battery pack. The 4660 cells would allow a manufacturer to have a somewhat lower floor height in a finished car.

Indeed, in June of last year, BMW announced it was transitioning away from the prismatic cells it had been using in its electric cars and would use cylindrical battery cells that are 48 mm in diameter and of various lengths to fit the needs of various new models going forward.

What About Ultium?

When GM rolled out its Ultium battery technology, the PR types went wild, extolling its virtues to the skies. Here is how Ultiuim batteries were described in a company presentation:

  • Unlike traditional cylindrical battery cells, our high-energy pouch cells have a modular design.
  • Ultium’s long pouch cells waste less space and can stack on top of each other like pancakes or vertically like slices of toast. This simple modular design makes it easy for engineers to optimize energy density and vehicle layout, which translates to more miles on a single charge for less cost.
  • Our Ultium cells pack a punch! It would take 20 small cylindrical can cells (the ones our competitors use) to produce the power of one Ultium large-format 100 amp-hour cell. Our Ultium cells are so robust, they can electrically and physically support EVs of every shape and size.
  • Our battery options scale from 50 kilowatt hours to over 200 kWh, which will enable a GM-estimated range of 300 miles or more on a full charge.

But wait, there’s more! According to GM:

  • Stacking battery pouch cells enables flexible engineering…and a more comfortable ride!We’ll engineer some of America’s most popular vehicles (think trucks, SUVs and crossovers) with vertically-stacked cells – like toast, whereas performance vehicles, which are deeply embedded in our DNA, may include horizontally-stacked cells – like pancakes. GM’s ability to stack long pouch cells vertically or horizontally in modules is unique in the industry.
  • To save even more space, the battery’s electronic components will be embedded within the modules, eliminating 80 percent of the battery pack wiring compared to today’s batteries.
  • We reduced the height of the battery module underneath the second row, which will not only give second-row passengers a more comfortable ride, but also adds 22 kWh of energy storage in this space.

Now all that wonderfulness is out the window. Pouch cells are out and cylindrical cells are in. The world of public relations is a bizarre and mysterious place!

Do we know who GM will turn to for its 4680 battery cells? No, we do not, although Samsung SDI must certainly be in the running.

The partnership between LG and GM is a long standing one. LG built most of the internal workings of the original Chevy Bolt, including the dashboard. And what of those 3 battery factories the two companies are building? Will they manufacture pouch cells or cylindrical cells? No one knows. There is more to this story than meets the eye and we will keep our readers informed as we learn more.

error: Content is protected !!