The electric battery industry takes another step in Catalonia. The Israeli multinational ICL and the Chinese Shenzhen Dynanonic plan to invest 285 million euros in the production of lithium iron phosphate for electric battery cathodes in Sallent, at the facilities that ICL closed in 2020.
Both companies plan to create a joint-venture to launch the new plant, on land totaling 100,000 square meters. When this investment materializes, the plant will be the first to produce these materials for batteries in Catalonia.
The lithium-ferrophosphate that will be obtained through the plant "is a critical solution for the future of Europe's energy transition," highlighted the president of ICL's Phosphate Solutions Division, Phil Brown. From Dynanonic, the company has defended that this project allows advancing in the objectives of both companies in the development of the lithium-ion battery industry in Europe.
"Batteries are a fundamental element," proclaimed the Minister of Business and Labor of the Generalitat, Miquel Sàmper. To continue advancing in this direction, he announced that the Government plans to travel to China to visit Dynanonic's facilities and explore collaborations to "manufacture more batteries in Catalonia." And it is that the Government is committed to electrifying the vehicle fleet and also industrial and business processes "as soon as possible."
The conversion of the ICL Iberia plant will also generate "quality jobs," according to Sàmper. The minister said this during a visit to Bages, where ICL Iberia Súria and Sallent —formerly Iberpotash— has other facilities and the Cabanasses mine, near which the highest mountain in the region rises: the mountain of saline waste derived from mining activity that ICL must dismantle over the next decades by judicial order.