POSCO Holdings Signs Business Agreement on Lithium Project with Australia's Hancock

Securing Lithium Raw Material Supply Chain for Secondary Batteries
Promotion of Establishing a Production Plant with an Annual Capacity of 30,000 Tons

POSCO Holdings has partnered with Australian mining company Hancock Prospecting to strengthen the supply chain for raw materials used in secondary batteries.

According to POSCO Holdings on the 10th, the company signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) related to lithium business cooperation with Hancock the day before. The signing ceremony, held via video connection between Korea and Australia, was attended by POSCO Holdings Vice President and Head of Secondary Battery Materials Division Kim Jun-hyung and Hancock CEO Garry Korte, along with other executives from both companies.

POSCO Holdings and Australia's Hancock connected Korea and Australia via video on the 9th to sign a business agreement on lithium business cooperation. Photo by POSCO Holdings

Through this MOU, POSCO Holdings and Hancock will pursue a lithium business with an annual production capacity of 30,000 tons. The two companies plan to jointly review optimal candidate sites for lithium plant establishment among several countries including Korea, with detailed investment amounts and other specifics to be finalized later.

With this cooperation, POSCO Holdings will secure an additional stable lithium raw material supply chain protected from the U.S. Foreign Entity Operations Control (FEOC) regulations by linking with Hancock’s diverse mining assets. This will further strengthen the group’s lithium value chain, spanning from lithium mines and brine lakes to lithium hydroxide, cathode materials, and recycling.

Kim Jun-hyung said, “POSCO Holdings has built trust through a long-standing partnership with Hancock. We will review the optimal business structure in this lithium business cooperation and achieve fruitful results.”

Hancock, headquartered in Perth, Western Australia, is a mining specialist company whose main revenue source is iron ore business, and it is diversifying into lithium, natural gas, and rare earth elements. Since POSCO Group’s initial 12.5% stake investment in Hancock’s Roy Hill iron ore mine in 2010, the group has expanded cooperation with Hancock across the entire group, including the joint acquisition of Australian natural gas company Senex Energy with POSCO International in 2022.

POSCO Holdings is leveraging the secondary battery market chasm (a short-term low market phase) as an opportunity to secure high-quality lithium resources such as mines and brine lakes, aiming to expand resource supply chains and business capabilities to dominate the lithium market when the market recovers. This year, with the completion of lithium brine (annual 25,000 tons) and ore lithium (43,000 tons) plants in Argentina, POSCO Holdings has secured a total annual lithium production capacity of 68,000 tons, enough to produce approximately 1.6 million electric vehicles.