CHENNAI: India is exploring the possibility of tapping critical minerals, including lithium and cobalt, from mines in Australia in its bid to reach net zero by 2070.
Minister for Resources and Northern Australia, Madeleine King, revealed that India had identified two lithium and three cobalt mines under the Australia-India Critical Minerals Investment Partnership. Australia is a major producer of these minerals, with the world's second-largest cobalt and fourth-largest rare earth deposits.
Although there are no firm plans yet, India is considering processing the minerals in Australia rather than shipping them to India, due to the cost and difficulty of waste disposal.
"Processing of critical minerals in India would be difficult as it costs much and a bigger challenge would be to dispose of the waste," she says.
Although Australia is sitting on huge critical mineral resources, it is unable to use them in battery manufacturing here as the country does not have a car manufacturing unit, Madeleine said. She added that there is an expression of interest with the Indian companies so that they would be able to take the offtake.
An offtake agreement is an agreement between the buyer (off-taker) and the seller to trade goods before their production. It is typically used for natural resources development projects requiring huge capital investment like mining, oil and gas extraction.
The Australia-India Critical Minerals Investment Partnership was signed after Parliamentary Affairs, Coal and Mines after Pralhad Joshi visited Western Australia last year and toured Tianqi Lithium Energy’s Kwinana Lithium Hydroxide Refinery.
Due to the increased demand and forecast shortage of critical minerals, the primary metals used to produce batteries have all experienced price increases. This has increased the forecast price for lithium-ion battery packs. Between December 2021 and December 2022, lithium, nickel and cobalt prices increased by 499%, 117% and 56% respectively. Battery pack material costs – of which critical minerals are a key contributor – comprise between 50% and 70% of the total battery pack price.
It is also learnt that Ola Electric Mobility Pvt Ltd (OEM), which had earlier signed a memorandum of understanding with the Tamil Nadu government for a Cell Manufacturing plant in Krishnagiri, had a brief conversation with Raj Surendran, chief executive officer of Tianqi Lithium Energy Australia during a industrial conference in Australia.
The plant, which was also visited by The New Indian Express, completed the first phase of the project in 2022. The work on developing the second phase is going on.
"There is potential for up to four trains at the Kwinana refinery, each with a production capacity of 24,000 tonnes of lithium hydroxide per year. These will be produced using spodumene mined and concentrated in Western Australia," said Surendran.
He says there are another two lithium hydroxide plants under construction in Western Australia, the Albermale plant in Kemerton, and Covalent’s Kwinana plant. The three plants, when fully operational, have a total production capacity of 96,000 tonnes each per year. Together these three plants have the potential to contribute eight to 10 per cent of global lithium supply.
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