CATL's subsidiary acquires exploration rights to a lithium clay project in China

As the race to acquire critical materials needed for battery cell manufacturing intensifies, Yichun Contemporary Amperex Resources Limited, a subsidiary of battery giant CATL, has announced that it has acquired exploration rights to a lithium clay project in Yichun, East China's Jiangxi province.

The deposit, covering an area of 6.44 sq. km, is estimated to contain about 2.66 million tons of associated lithium metal oxide in the 960.25 million tons of porcelain clay minerals. The bid for the project was won at a cost of 865 million yuan (~134.8 million U.S. dollars).

"The acquirement of Yichun lithium clay deposit by Yichun Contemporary Amperex Resources Limited marks an important step of CATL's comprehensive industry chain layout," CATL said in a statement on Thursday.

The bid follows CATL agreement last September with the Yichun municipal government to jointly construct a new lithium-ion battery production base and strengthen cooperation in the upstream and downstream sectors of the industry chain.

The company is expected to 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, CATL stated.