Argentina wants to control lithium production chain

Last week, a pool of government and academic institutions in Argentina revealed plans to open three plants to process lithium, the light metal used in the fabrication of batteries for electronic devices and electric vehicles. The country is one of the three South American nations that hold, together, more than half the world’s reserves of the metal – but the product is sold as purified ore, to be processed abroad.

One of these three plants will purify the metal while a second will produce inputs and a third will assemble the batteries. The Argentinian intention is to add value to the mineral, whose raw tonne is sold at about US$ 300. This figure grows to US$ 6,000 when the ore is purified to above 95% and peak at US$ 6 million per tonne of metallic lithium, the final input to assemble the battery.

Meanwhile, Brazilian lithium output is marginal, reaching 180 tonnes in 2010, according to data compiled by the U.S. Geological Survey – which estimates Brazilian reserves to be around a million tonnes, or 3% of the total global reserves.