Bolivia will in the coming weeks choose a new junior partner to help industrialize its lithium deposits from among seven companies that submitted proposals, including German firm ACI Systems GmbH, a government official said.
The other offers to work with Bolivia to tap two lithium-rich salt flats — Coipasa and Pastos Grandes — were submitted by Chinese companies and two Russian firms, Bolivian Deputy Minister of High Energy Technologies Luis Alberto Echazu told reporters in an interview on Thursday.
“The evaluation will take at least two to three weeks, maybe a bit more,” Echazu said, adding that the decision could be made at the end of the month or early next month.
Bolivia is believed to have one of the largest lithium reserves in the world, but has yet to produce the metal on a large scale. Bolivian President Evo Morales has sought to keep the metal, used in the production of batteries for electric cars and laptops, from being exported merely as a raw material.
In April, Bolivian state lithium company YLB announced that it would team up with privately owned ACI Systems to develop its massive Uyuni salt flat.
The project, expected to cost at least US$1.2 billion, includes plans to build a lithium hydroxide plant and a factory for producing electric car batteries in Bolivia.
For Coipasa and Pastos Grandes, Bolivia is not requiring that interested companies build a battery factory in Bolivia, YLB manager Juan Carlos Montenegro said.
“It’s no longer restricted to just Bolivia,” Montenegro said in a separate interview on Thursday. “In other words, we’re willing to be partners outside Bolivia.”
However, Bolivia’s partner on Coipasa and Pastos Grandes will be required to turn the lithium into cathode material required for battery production before shipment, Montenegro said.
As with Uyuni, YLB is to maintain majority control of the joint venture and require its partner to guarantee future sales of lithium, Montenegro said.
Bolivia would not necessarily take a majority stake in any battery factory that its partner builds abroad, he added.
Echazu and Montenegro declined to estimate how much lithium Coipasa and Pastos Grandes hold, but Echazu said that the investment would likely be as large, or larger than the project at Uyuni, which is estimated to contain at least 10 million tonnes of lithium.
Bolivia has hired two companies to certify lithium reserves at Uyuni and expects a figure to be announced late this year, Echazu said.
WASHINGTON’S INCENTIVES: The CHIPS Act set aside US$39 billion in direct grants to persuade the world’s top semiconductor companies to make chips on US soil The US plans to award more than US$6 billion to Samsung Electronics Co, helping the chipmaker expand beyond a project in Texas it has already announced, people familiar with the matter said. The money from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act would be one of several major awards that the US Department of Commerce is expected to announce in the coming weeks, including a grant of more than US$5 billion to Samsung’s rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), people familiar with the plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the official announcements. The federal funding for
HIGH DEMAND: The firm has strong capabilities of providing key components including liquid cooling technology needed for AI servers, chairman Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday revised its revenue outlook for this year to “significant” growth from a “neutral” view forecast five months ago, due to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers from cloud service providers. Hon Hai, a major assembler of iPhones that is also known as Foxconn, expects AI server revenues to soar more than 40 percent annually this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) told investors. The robust growth would uplift revenue contribution from AI servers to 40 percent of the company’s overall server revenue this year, from 30 percent last year, Liu said. In the three-year period
LONG HAUL: Largan Energy Materials’ TNO-based lithium-ion batteries are expected to charge in five minutes and last about 20 years, far surpassing conventional technology Largan Precision Co (大立光) has formed a joint venture with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) to produce fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, mobile electronics and electric storage units, the camera lens supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhones said yesterday. Largan Energy Materials Co (萬溢能源材料), established in January, is developing high-energy, fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries using titanium niobium oxide (TNO) anodes, it said. TNO-based batteries can be fully charged in five minutes and have a lifespan of 20 years, a major advantage over the two to four hours of charging time needed for conventional graphite-anode-based batteries, Largan said in a
Taiwan is one of the first countries to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, but because that is largely down to a single company it also represents a risk, former Google Taiwan managing director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰) said at an AI forum in Taipei yesterday. Speaking at the forum on how generative AI can generate possibilities for all walks of life, Chien said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) — currently among the world’s 10 most-valuable companies due to continued optimism about AI — ensures Taiwan is one of the economies to benefit most from AI. “This is because AI is