Albemarle Corp chief executive, chairman and president Kent Masters and Albemarle president lithium Eric Norris in Perth last week. Credit: Danella Bevis/The West Australian
US chemicals giant Albemarle has identified WA as a target for further investment as it looks to expand its global lithium business to meet the world’s transition to electric vehicles.
The company already has a significant presence in the State with a long-standing 49 per cent stake in the Greenbushes lithium mine in the South West and a new lithium hydroxide plant at Kemerton as part of a joint venture with Mineral Resources, which also involves a 50 per cent stake in the Chris Ellison-led company’s Wodgina mine in the Pilbara.
But Albemarle chairman, president and chief executive Kent Masters — who visited WA last week with the company’s lithium president Eric Norris — said further investments were likely in future as the EV revolution gained momentum.
And Mr Masters indicated the company’s growth ambitions in WA covered both mining and chemical conversion.
He described WA as a great jurisdiction in which to invest given its strong resource base, familiarity with mining and free trade agreements with other Western countries.
“WA is one of the geographies that we will look at for (more) conversion,” he said.
“We need to build another plant, and then we need more resource, and then we need more plants — this trend is going to go on for quite a long time.
“Every time we meet with one of our significant customers, they want to know how fast we can go and how much more we can give them.
“We have access to capital and we’ve got a pretty good balance sheet. The ability to execute is probably our limiting factor.
“At the moment we have enough resource to grow but as we look out towards the end of the decade, we’ll need more resource.”
Mr Masters said the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act in the US would benefit mining and processing of critical minerals in Australia, and especially WA, because of incentives for US manufacturers to specifically source materials from trusted partners with Free Trade Agreement status.
Mr Norris said the company was already fielding more inquiries from US automakers about sourcing product from Albermarle’s Kemerton plant in the wake of the Inflation Reduction Act.
“This EV transformation that’s going on now doesn’t happen without WA,” he said.
Albemarle's Kemerton lithium hydroxide plant. Credit: Robert Garvey
While the company experienced cost overruns and delays with the $US1 billion-plus Kemerton plant, which was built during the COVID pandemic, Mr Masters said it would not deter the company from further investment in the State.
He noted Kemerton was Albemarle’s biggest build to date and there had been labour shortages and supply chain disruptions during the project’s execution but the company had learned valuable lessons.
Albemarle originally planned to build trains one and two of the plant simultaneously but moved to a staged development because of COVID, which Mr Masters said had worked well.
“We’ve done better on (train) two than one ... three and four will be better than two and with a bit of a luck we won’t be doing it during a COVID lockdown,” he said.
“We’re building our capability to execute and ramping that up. This was a big test, and we struggled, but I think we passed.”
Trains 3 and 4 would double the plant’s capacity to 100,000tpa, making it the biggest such facility outside of China.
Mr Masters said the company allowed for a two-year commissioning stage before full nameplate capacity with each 25,000tpa train.
While Albermarle’s partner MinRes last month flagged plans to make EV batteries in WA as part of its downstream ambitions, Mr Masters said that was not part of the Charlotte-based company’s strategy.
“We supply the materials, our customers make cathodes and batteries,” he said.
“I don’t think our customers would look very favourably on us getting into the battery business, plus we don’t see it fitting our strategy.”
Mr Masters declined to comment on speculation about MinRes spinning out its lithium business, other than saying he didn’t believe it would affect the company’s joint venture relationship.
“If we are working with an MRL that is a little more focused on lithium, that’s probably a good thing,” he said.
Albemarle’s global operations span lithium, bromines and catalysts. Its lithium division includes conversion plants in China, Germany, the US and Chile, brine operations in Chile, the US and Argentina and a hard rock mine in the US.
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