Yichun Contemporary Amperex Resources Limited, a subsidiary of CATL, won the bid for the exploration rights to a lithium clay project in Yichun, east China’s Jiangxi province at a cost of 865 million yuan (about 134.8 million U.S. dollars).
Located in Huaqiao Town of Yifeng County and Shangfu Town of Fengxin County and covering an area of 6.44 square kilometers, the deposit is estimated to contain about 2.66 million tons of associated lithium metal oxide in the 960.25 million tons of porcelain clay minerals.
Last September, CATL signed an agreement with the Yichun municipal government to jointly build a new lithium-ion battery production base and strengthen cooperation in the upstream and downstream sectors of the industry chain. The acquirement of the Yichun lithium clay deposit by Yichun Contemporary Amperex Resources Limited marks an important step of CATL’s comprehensive industry chain layout.
CATL will speed up the exploration and development of lithium mineral resources and increase the supply of lithium in a bid to bring the prices of lithium related raw materials back to a reasonable level while ensuring the security of national strategic mineral resources, and help Yichun build a new energy industry system ranging from lithium resources, lithium-ion battery materials, EV batteries to electric vehicles so as to develop the city into a sustainable lithium-ion battery hub in Asia.
