Jiangxi expands lithium base in high-quality push

Province completes industrial chain from mining to production to attract top-tier firms

East China's Jiangxi province is actively leveraging its advantages in upstream lithium resources to expand downstream sectors such as battery and electric vehicle manufacturing, with a view to becoming a leading industrial cluster.

The province has already formed three major lithium battery industrial bases in Yichun, Xinyu, and Ganzhou, and various clusters for lithium battery manufacturing in cities such as Nanchang, Shangrao, Pingxiang and Fuzhou.

Last year, the total value of Jiangxi's lithium battery and new energy industry reached 406.51 billion yuan ($57 billion), a 120.3 percent year-on-year growth, according to the provincial government.

The province has developed a complete industrial chain covering mining and production of major battery materials, lithium batteries, new energy vehicles and power storage facilities, said Jiang Mingcheng, deputy head of the Department of Industry and Information Technology of Jiangxi Province.

Yichun, a city in the northwest of Jiangxi with abundant lithium resources, is optimizing its business environment to attract top-tier lithium battery companies.

In September, Yichun launched an action plan to promote the development of the new energy sector with an emphasis on the lithium battery industry, aiming to advance the industry chain toward high-end, intelligent, green and integrated development.

The city hopes its lithium battery and new energy industry will achieve a revenue of 250 billion yuan by 2026.

To realize this vision, the local government said in the action plan that it will intensify lithium-rich mica mineral resource extraction, develop technologies for extracting lithium from salt lakes and lithium spodumene, and enhance its industrial ecosystem.

Further efforts will also be made to promote the progress of major projects from battery giants like Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd and Gotion High-tech, to further expand the production capacity of lithium carbonate, battery materials and batteries.

CATL's first project in Yichun, the Yichun Times Battery Factory Phase I, garnered a total investment of 13.5 billion yuan with a planned annual production capacity of 50 gigawatt-hours for lithium-ion batteries and energy storage batteries. The project's first battery cell factory has been put into operation.

Tang Jianhua, director of operations at Yichun Times, said after the first battery cell factory reaches its planned capacity, the annual output will be enough to power about 500,000 electric vehicles.