MOSCOW (MRC) -- Chinese lithium producer Sichuan Yahua Industrial has signed an agreement to supply battery-grade lithium hydroxide to US electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, said Chemweeek.
The contract will run from 2021-25, with a total value of USD630-880mn. More details including the purchase volumes and prices were undisclosed. Lithium hydroxide is used to manufacture nickel-cobalt-manganese/nickel-cobalt-aluminium batteries, particularly those with high nickel content.
Sichuan Yahua in May launched a 20,000 t/yr lithium hydroxide production facility in Ya'an city in southwest China's Sichuan province. The firm in the same month said it would issue 1.5bn yuan (USD229.9mn) of non-public bonds to finance a lithium salts production project, with a designed capacity of 20,000 t/yr for battery-grade lithium hydroxide and 11,000 t/yr for lithium chloride.
Yahua produced 6,662t of lithium salts in 2019, up by 30pc from a year earlier, with sales rising by 66pc to 11,726t over the same period. Buoyant demand from the country's battery sector has prompted lithium producers to ramp up production over the past few years in China's fast-growing new energy vehicle market.
Tesla expanded the capacity of its Shanghai factory to 250,000 Model 3 cars/yr in the third quarter of 2020, up by 50,000 cars/yr from the second quarter. Production capacity at the Shanghai factory has risen by 67pc since the third quarter of 2019. The firm also plans to build a plant in Shanghai to produce charging piles to meet increasing demand from Chinese consumers for convenient and fast-charging services.
As per MRC, Piedmont is under way with initial development plans for a 160,000-metric tons/year spodumene mine and 22,700-metric tons/year lithium hydroxide project in North Carolina, with an integrated definitive feasibility study due to start in the first quarter of this year. In September it signed a five-year deal with Tesla to supply spodumene concentrate for high-nickel batteries.
We remind that Russia's output of chemical products rose in November 2020 by 9.5% year on year. At the same time, production of basic chemicals increased in the first eleven months of 2020 by 6.6% year on year, according to Rosstat's data. According to the Federal State Statistics Service of the Russian Federation, polymers in primary form accounted for the greatest increase in the January-November 2020 output. November production of polymers in primary form rose to 896,000 tonnes from 852,000 tonnes in October. Overall output of polymers in primary form totalled 9,240,000 tonnes over the stated period, up by 17.1% year on year.
MRC