Argentina's 1st lithium battery plant to focus on regional market

Argentina’s first lithium cell and battery plant, Unilib, will be supplied with national inputs and produce mainly for the regional market.

The US$7mn unit in La Plata city, Buenos Aires province, is in the last construction phase and will start operations this year.

“We have no plans to compete with the Asian market, nor with Europe or the US. Cells and batteries have a regional space, towards Mercosur, where we have 12 or 13 automotive terminals,” Roberto Salvarezza, the head of state company YPF's technology unit Y-TEC told an event hosted by Ámbito Financiero.

The Mercosur trade bloc is made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

"Argentina has the advantage of being the owner of the resource because it has lithium, and of becoming the supplier of the critical element of electromobility, which is the battery," Salvarezza, a former science and technology minister, said.

The plant has been developed by Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Y-TEC and the science, technology and innovation ministry.

Salvarezza is open to build larger plants to add more value with other partners, as "YPF is associated with many companies to produce gas." 

Lithium will be supplied by Catamarca province, based on an agreement signed last year. Graphite to produce anodes will come from coke from YPF’s oil refineries in La Plata or San Rafael.

Sofía Gómez of national scientific and technical research council Conicet said in a statement that graphite is currently imported from China, but research is underway to try to synthesize more of the material from refining byproducts.

Unilib will produce lithium-ferrophosphate batteries, Salvarezza said, adding that production should reach industrial scale, given the global demand. He also said more value could be added to Argentine lithium in the future.

Aluminum will be supplied by local private company Aluar, polyethylene and polypropylene from local petrochemical companies, while electrolyte compounds are being developed by the national atomic energy commission.

This way, Y-TEC wants to add stages to the value chain, including direct extraction, purification, conversion to carbonate, transformation to active materials, and assembly of the battery cells, according to a Conicet statement.

"It is key for our sovereignty to develop capacities in Argentina that add value to lithium in different stages," Conicet chemical engineer Jorge Thomas said in the statement.

Thomas added that various extraction systems are in the piloting phase to “shorten processes from years to weeks or days and consume less water and energy.”

Currently, Argentine lithium is exported as raw material for industrialization mainly to China.