Sept. 29 (NBD) -- On September 28, Tsingshan Group, GEM, Brunp Recycling (CATL Holdings), PT Bintangdelapan Group and Hanwa Co., Ltd signed a "Contract for the Project of Developing Laterite Nickel Ore to Produce Battery-grade Nickel Chemicals (50 thousand tons of nickel in metal per year)."

According to the agreement, a joint venture will be established with all the parties investing 700 million dollars at Morowali County, Central Sulawesi in Indonesia, where the Tsingshan Park in China-Indonesia Comprehensive Industrial Park is located, to carry out nickel smelting and deep processing and to become a world-advanced power battery raw material manufacturing base.

The initial goal of this project is to build a hydrometallurgy capacity of no less than 50 thousand tons of nickel in metal, 4,000 tons of cobalt metal hydrometallurgy capacity then to produce 50 thousand tons of nickel hydroxide intermediates, 150 thousand tons of battery-grade nickel sulfate crystals, 20 thousand tons of battery-grade cobalt sulfate crystals, and 30 thousand tons of battery-grade manganese sulfate crystals. In the future, the product structure will be adjusted according to the global market demand and the production scale will be expanded.

Jingmen GEM will hold 36% of the joint venture. Wholly-owned Hong Kong entity of Tsingshan Group will hold 21%. Brunp Recycling will hold 25%. IMIP will hold 10%. Hanwa Co., Ltd will hold 8%.

GEM announced on September 20 that GEM and Eternal Tsingshan Technology Inc. will join together to build Ningde New Energy Materials Industrial Park, to build a world-class ternary raw materials and cathode material manufacturing system with an initial investment of RMB 1.85 billion, and to build 50 thousand tons of ternary precursor and 20 thousand tons of ternary cathode materials. A ground-breaking event was held in Fu'an, Ningde on the day of signing the agreement.

More than 200 people from the world's top five battery factories - Samsung SDI, CATL, Panasonic, LGC, BYD, as well as Glencore, Toke resources and other related industries participated in the ground-breaking ceremony.

"Laterite-nickel ore goes into furnaces, is refined to ternary materials then used to produce battery." A whole industrial chain of Nickel based new energy material will amaze the world.

This will be the nickel industry's milestone and become the giant alliance's model. It will surely set off a turbulent wave in the world of nickel resources in the past five years, bringing unlimited imagination to people and the new hope to the transformation and development of the world's nickel resources industry. 

A city is creating a legend in the energy industry. 

Time flies, the wheel of history is going towards electrification and intelligence. Ningde of China, a forerunner who leads this wave, rising from the ocean is forming an irresistible force to become the global focal city of the new energy industry. 

Nickel resource, is changing the way of travel rapidly.

Nickel, an ancient chemical element, is now making a shining appearance and becoming the key element on ternary powered new energy material. NCM811 and NCA, these ternary cathode material which contain more than 80% of Ni, provide low cost power for new energy vehicles and make them overwhelming.

As GEM's announcement said, the explosive growth of the new energy vehicle industry drives itself to be the main industry leading the global green development. In the following 20 years, ternary power batteries will become the mainstream power of new energy vehicles. The high-nickel ternary material will be the core material of ternary power batteries, accounting for over 40% of ternary power batteries' cost and enjoying a broad market prospect as well. The global commercialization of new energy vehicles propels high nickel ternary materials explosively growing demand for primary nickel resources. However, there will be a global shortage of primary nickel resources by 2020 and will increase to more than 500,000 tons in 2025. Therefore, ensuring the strategic security of nickel resources has become a common concern in the whole industry.

According to calculations, with the development and commercialization of new energy vehicles, by 2025 there will have more than half a million tons of shortage of primary nickel resources. China's nickel reserves account for only about 3% of the world's nickel resources, but China is a big country that consumes such resource. Indonesia is one of the countries with the richest laterite nickel ore resources in the world, accounting for more than 10% of the global laterite nickel ore reserve which is mainly concentrated in Sulawesi and nearby islands.

GEM's semiannual report shows a great growing in ternary material sector (98.7% year-on-year growth, accounting for 57.54% of the total operating income), and its base in Jingmen, Hubei Province has been built to have over 60 thousand tons of production capacity of ternary material. In 2017, its shipments occupied the first market position in China, mainly supplying CATL and Samsung's supply chain. According to GEM's published information, it will form a total production capacity of more than 100 thousand tons of ternary precursors and materials by 2020, and the demand for nickel resources will exceed 50 thousand tons. 

Mr. Xu Kaihua, chairman of the GEM's board of directors, said at the signing ceremony on September 28 that the automotive power has entered the era of high-nickel batteries and the global new energy industry is undergoing a drastic reshuffle. The result of the competition is that the owners of nickel resources will have a dominant voice. Solving the strategic supply of nickel resources is a major event that GEM has been working hard for many years, and is also the key to the successful development of GEM's ternary power materials business. The cooperation with Tsingshan Group and other leading companies in the field will help GEM to gain strategic nickel supply and stabilize the downstream strategic market. Through the implementation of the Nickel Resources Project in Indonesia, GEM is no longer worried about nickel raw materials, and will play a great role in promoting GEM to become a global competitive manufacturer of new energy raw materials.

Wise men always have the courage to be the first to create infinite opportunities!

The times forges heroes. When resources, technology and market are combined, tremendous chemical change will be made.

Announcement stated that Tsingshan Group, which is a world leader in the stainless-steel industry and an outstanding enterprise in China. It has created a technological innovation and industrial development legend of the whole industrial chain from laterite nickel mine to stainless steel products.

"Making life-long stainless-steel and creating an evergreen future" is the industrial concept of Tsingshan Group. Tsingshan group developed oversea markets, took the lead in having a number of abundant reserves of nickel resource mines in Indonesia, the ore reserves of more than 10 million tons, and the nickel metal reserves of more than 12 million tons, and it built the world's largest smelting capacity of nickel iron alloy, which has an important impact on the global nickel resources market.

According to public information, Tsingshan Group achieved sales of more than 16 billion RMB in 2017, ranking 11th among China's top 500 private owned enterprises. The total investment in Indonesia Tsingshan Park reached 5 billion US dollars. The park has become the largest full industry chain manufacturing base where stainless steel is directly produced from laterite nickel ore. With an annual output of 3 million tons of stainless steel hot rolled coils, this park has completed the construction of infrastructure like wharf (with an annual throughput of 30 million tons), power (2 million KW) and road traffic. Furthermore, the park has a full set of living facilities which include staff dormitories, training centers, mosques and hotels. Having more than 30 thousand staff members and annual output value of 6 billion dollars, Tsingshan Park has become an outstanding representative that synergizes the Chinese government's the "Belt and Road Initiative" with the Indonesian strategy of "Global Maritime Nexus" and an excellent enterprise in the development of the "Belt and Road Initiative."

GEM (002340.SZ) is a listed company on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange of China. It is a leading enterprise in the field of circular economy in China. According to public information, in 2017, GEM achieved sales revenue of 10.7 billion RMB, ranking seventh in China's listed environmental companies. "Limited resources, unlimited recycling" is GEM's industrial concept. In the past 15 years, GEM started with recycling tiny used-batteries, from disposing of E-waste to recycling of end-of-life vehicles, then to echelon utilization of power battery pack. Insisting on extracting Nickel, Cobalt and Manganese from waste and transforming waste into wealth, and having 16 recycling industrial parks globally, it has become a world leading enterprise on E-waste, end-of-life vehicle and used-battery recycling. GEM has been adopting "subtraction method" for years and when the new energy era comes, we switched to "addition method" instantly, using innovative technology to polymerize Nickel, Cobalt, Manganese together. It has become the world's largest manufacturing enterprise of ternary precursor material, hence shifting from waste recycling to the trillion dollar worth of new energy material market. On January 22, 2018, the company won the Davos World Economic Forum Global Cycle Economy Multinational Corporation Award, enjoying a lofty position in the field of waste recycling in the world.

Guangdong Brunp Recycling Technology Co., Ltd is a holding company of Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Ltd (CATL). It is a leading national high-tech enterprise engaged in the recycling of waste batteries and the manufacturing of high-end battery materials. As one of the leaders manufacturing ternary power battery materials in China, Brunp has accumulated more than ten years of technological development and industrial experience in the manufacturing of ternary materials.

Established and incorporated in Japan in 1947 and listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, Hanwa is one of the leading trading companies in Japan, supplying a broad range of products, including steel, metals and alloys, nonferrous metals, food products, petroleum and chemicals, limber, machinery and many other items to diverse customers. In particular, Hanwa has been, for more than decades, a renowned leader in the realm of raw materials, such as nickel and cobalt, for batteries for consumer electronics devices as well as electric vehicles all over the world. Hanwa holds a unique Lithium asset in Mexico.

Though the fort looks as impregnable as iron made, nickel leads the way to green energy!

A new energy material industrial park that will astonish the world is ready to sail today!

Email: lansuying@nbd.com.cn