South Korean steel giant Posco continues to strengthen its access to lithium after it agreed on Monday to acquire mining tenements in Argentina worth US$280m from Australia's Galaxy Resources.
The agreement gives Posco full mining rights in a 17,500-hectare area in the northern section of Argentina's Salar del Hombre Muerto salt flat from 2021, which has a potential production capacity of 25,000 tons of lithium per year.
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This will lift Posco's future annual lithium production capacity to 55,000tons per year, after it signed a deal with Australia's Pilbara Minerals in February giving it access to a potential 30,000 tons of lithium per year from 2020.
The steelmaker is rapidly positioning itself as a key supplier of lithium-ion battery components, at a time when global demand from plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles is set to soar.
Last March the company announced a joint investment with Samsung SDI in a new factory for lithium-ion battery cathodes in Chile, in a move that was expected to help them secure future supplies of raw materials for electric vehicle batteries.
