South Korean steel and chemicals group Posco Holdings Inc announced this week that it has completed construction of its first lithium hydroxide plant in Güemes, in Argentina’s Salta province.

In recent years, the Posco group has been positioning itself as a key global supplier of electric vehicle (EV) battery materials, including cathode and anode materials which have a high lithium content.

Argentina is part of the South American “Lithium Triangle”, an area rich in lithium deposits spanning the mountainous regions of Chile, Argentina and Bolivia. Posco acquired the mining rights for the Hombre Muerto Salt Pan in Salta Province in 2018 and subsequently established a local subsidiary, Posco Argentina.

Posco Argentina began construction of the Güemes plant, which has an annual production capacity of 25,000 tons of lithium hydroxide — enough for an estimated 600,000 battery electric vehicles (BEVs) — in 2022. The facility, located at an altitude of around 4,000 meters, extracts and processes lithium phosphate from adjacent brine lakes.

The company is also investing KRW 1 trillion (US$723 million) in a second 25,000 ton/year lithium hydroxide plant nearby and has plans for a third 50,000 ton/year facility later on, as it looks to strengthen its position in the global EV battery supply chain.