What’s new: China’s Citic Guoan Group Co. Ltd. has won a contract to help the Bolivian government develop the country’s vast and largely untapped lithium deposits, joining Chinese peers including battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. (CATL).
State-linked Citic Guoan and Bolivia’s government-owned Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB) will cooperate in the mining, refining, processing and sale of lithium resources, according to the deal signed Thursday. Uranium One Group, a uranium mining unit of Russian state-owned nuclear energy firm Rosatom, also signed a lithium agreement with YLB.
The companies will each build a processing plant with the capacity to produce around 25,000 tons of lithium carbonate per year.
Construction of a plant in Uyuni, a city in southwest Bolivia, is expected to begin either at the end of this year or early 2024, with an investment of around $800 million, one source close to Citic Guoan told Caixin. The plant could begin production in 2025, the source added.
The background: The deal follows a similar agreement signed in January by YLB and a Chinese consortium led by CATL to invest upwards of $1 billion in infrastructure to help develop local lithium reserves.
Bolivia has the richest known lithium storage worldwide, with 21 million tons, or 24% of the global total, according to the U.S. Geological Survey in a 2021 report. But it has limited local means to develop the deposits.
The deals to enlist foreign help also comes as Chinese companies are accelerating efforts to search overseas for the key battery material, which has seen a surge in demand due to the explosive development of China’s electric vehicle sector.
Related: In Depth: Why China’s Lithium Firms Have Their Sights Set on Bolivia
Contact reporter Kelsey Cheng (kelseycheng@caixin.com) and editor Jonathan Breen (jonathanbreen@caixin.com)
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