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The president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, visited the building where the first Argentine lithium cell and battery manufacturing plant will be located, located in the Technology Transfer Center of the National University of La Plata (UNLP), in the city homonymous, province of Buenos Aires.
In an official statement, it is ensured that the work has already been completed, and that next October it will receive the equipment for its definitive start-up, with the forecast to enter into operations at the end of this year.
The plant, which was announced last July , occupies an area of ??1,300 square meters, and ensures that the annual production will be, measured in stored energy, about 13 MWh, equivalent "to a thousand batteries for stationary storage of renewable energy or about 50 for electric buses”. It is also stated that "it will have seventy pieces of equipment, some of them automated, and it will create 50 direct jobs", for which the operators have already been trained through the UNLP School of Trades, who will be in charge of the first phase of commissioning of the plant and who will be members of the support staff career of the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET), the main organization dedicated to the promotion of science and technology in the country.
The civil works of the plant, the machinery and the production of electrode materials required, according to the statement, "investments of 770 million pesos (5.6 million dollars)".
“Argentina is the second largest lithium reserve in the world, so we not only have to export it, but also industrialize it. I have seen how the world calls for lithium as energy and I think we have the opportunity to provide it,” said President Fernández.
For his part, the Minister of Science, Daniel Filmus, said: “Our objective with this plant, which will be active at the end of the year, is not to export lithium carbonate but to advance the possibility of our own technology that allows us to develop lithium batteries. lithium for electromobility projects and to supply energy to different places such as rural schools that do not have solar energy”. |
