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From Peru to Laos, MIND ID starts hunt for lithium
Lithium is a key ingredient in the production of lithium-ion EV batteries that Indonesia plans to mass-produce in capturing a growing global EV market.
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tate-owned mining holding firm MIND ID is scouring the globe for lithium, the key ingredient Indonesia needs to realize its plan of mass-producing electric vehicle (EV) batteries.
MIND ID president director Orias Petrus Moedak said on Friday that the company had been in talks with potential lithium suppliers in Peru, Canada, Jordan, Laos, Australia, Morocco, Senegal and Malawi, among other countries.
“[The search] is still in its early stages. We are only going to start sending people once the COVID-19 [pandemic] is over. In the early stages, we will just use Zoom,” he said in a virtual press conference.
He added that the Foreign Ministry, through its network of ambassadors, was helping to connect MIND ID with potential suppliers.
Lithium is a key ingredient in the production of lithium-ion EV batteries, including in the nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) and nickel cobalt aluminum (NCA) variants that Indonesia plans to mass-produce in capturing a growing global EV market.
Read also: New tech jolts Indonesia’s battery dreams
To that end, MIND ID and three other state-owned enterprises launched the Indonesia Battery Corporation (IBC) in late March. The mining holding owns 25 percent of the IBC, while its subsidiary, diversified miner PT Aneka Tambang (Antam), owns another 25 percent.
MIND ID previously acknowledged that lithium was a critically lacking metal and, therefore, planned to either acquire lithium mines abroad or import lithium.
According to the 2020 United States Geological Survey, Australia and Chile are the world’s top two lithium producers as they accounted for 77.9 percent of the world’s total 77,000-ton output in 2019. Indonesia does not produce lithium at the moment.
Read also: State holding to be Indonesia’s battering ram into global battery market
Orias also said on Friday that subsidiary tin miner PT Timah was looking for lithium reserves within Indonesia, but separately, Timah corporate secretary Abullah Umar declined to comment on the matter.
“At the moment, for domestic deposits, we are making sure that the [lithium] is really there. It can be found in unexpected places,” Orias said.
Meanwhile, Indonesian Mining Institute (IMI) chairman Irwandy Arif told The Jakarta Post on Monday that lithium had been detected in geothermal brines, oilfield brines and granite pegmatites in Sumatra, Sulawesi, West Kalimantan and the Bird’s Head Peninsula, West Papua.
However, “there is no quantitative data on Indonesia’s lithium potential at the moment”.
