The "K Battery Alliance", which is participated by South Korea's LG New Energy Company, plans to invest in the nickel resource industry chain in Indonesia. The idea is to invest 9 billion US dollars to deploy the entire industrial chain in Indonesia from the smelting and refining of raw nickel to the manufacture of precursor and cathode materials, battery packs and finished product assembly.
The Indonesian government also confirmed on April 18 that on April 14, an alliance composed of many South Korean companies including LG New Energy, LG Chem, LX International, and Posco Holdings, together with Indonesian nickel mine company Antam, Indonesian battery company IBC and others signed an investment agreement to build a battery industry value chain. As an in-depth partner of LG Chem, Posco Holdings and other companies, Huayou Cobalt is also a participant in the investment plan.
However, this agreement is carried out in a "non-binding" way that is not subject to legal constraints. All parties need to conduct follow-up negotiations on specific content such as shareholding relationship and business structure. It is expected that it will take some time before the final signing.
It is understood that the "K Battery Alliance", promoted by the Korean government, aims to support enterprises to accelerate the development of new-generation batteries such as NCMA (nickel, cobalt, manganese, aluminum) batteries, all-solid-state batteries, and lithium-sulfur batteries. A major direction of lithium battery technology upgrade.
At present, Korean battery companies mainly produce "high-nickel batteries" with a nickel content of more than 80%, and are approaching the goal of a nickel content of more than 90%. Market research firm SNE Research predicts that by 2030, the demand for nickel from three companies, LG New Energy, SKO, and Samsung SDI alone, will reach 648,000 tons, more than seven times that of this year.
Indonesia is rich in lithium and nickel resources, which has the world's largest nickel ore reserves and production, and it is expected that the continuous growth of reserves and production in the future will also come from Indonesia. Compared with the data released by the US Geological Survey from 2015 to 2020, the increase in global reserves is about 17 million tons in five years, and Indonesia's production will increase by 16.5 million tons. In addition, its lithium reserves are about 21 million tons, ranking first in the world.
Against the backdrop of persistently high upstream resource prices, building factories and investing in Indonesia has become the common choice of many lithium battery manufacturers, lithium battery material suppliers, and even OEMs.
On April 15, CATL announced that its holding subsidiary plans to invest no more than US$5.968 billion in power battery industry chain projects in Indonesia, including the integration of mining, smelting, precursors, cathodes, batteries and battery recycling industries. Joint venture construction projects include: Nickel ore development projects, pyrometallurgy projects, hydrometallurgy projects, battery recycling projects, battery material projects and battery manufacturing projects.
In addition, GEM and Rongbai Technology have invested in nickel resource projects in Indonesia; South Korea's Hyundai Motor Company and LG New Energy are building a 10GWh battery cooperation factory in Indonesia; Hon Hai also decided to invest 8 billion US dollars to produce electric vehicles in Indonesia
