South Korea's LG Energy Solution (LGES) on Wednesday broke ground on nickel processing plants in Indonesia, part of the company's $9.8 bn investment in the country to produce electric vehicle batteries.
The company will build a $3.5 bn smelter with the capacity to produce 150,000 tonnes of nickel sulfate per year. It will also build a $2.4 bn factory in the Batang park to produce 220,000 tonnes of precursor and 42,000 tonnes of cathode per year. That will provide the main raw material for its planned 200 gigawatt-hours battery cell plant in the industrial town of Karawang in West Java, worth $3.6 bn.
LGES and Indonesian state miner Aneka Tambang will sign an agreement in September to jointly invest in a $ 300 mn nickel mine in the eastern island of Halmahera to produce 16 mn tonnes of nickel ore.
With the world's biggest nickel reserves, Indonesia has ambitions to become a major producer of nickel-based products.Indonesia stopped exports of nickel ore in 2020 in an effort to attract foreign investment to develop its downstream industry. Indonesia also wants to replicate this strategy for other natural resources, including stopping exports of unprocessed bauxite and tin.
Aruna Gaitonde, Editor in Chief of the Asian Bureau, Rough&Polished
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