Xinyu: A budding global hot spot for lithium

Employees work in the power battery plant of Ganfeng Lithium Co Ltd in Xinyu, East China's Jiangxi province. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Tesla is a household name now and you possibly even own one of its latest models, but have you heard of Xinyu? The small city in East China's Jiangxi province is now one of the world's biggest producers of lithium salt that is used in vehicle batteries.

In 2020, the city of Xinyu produced 41.1 percent of China's lithium salt, and almost 29 percent of the world's supply. The city's economic growth has been robust. Last year Xinyu's GDP exceeded the 100-billion-yuan ($15.4 billion) mark, and doubled its figure for 2010. The city's per capital GDP exceeded $12,000 in 2020, second highest in the province.

It's no small achievement for a city like Xinyu. Among China's 293 prefecture-level cities, only 20 are smaller than Xinyu in land size. The city has an area of only 31.78 square kilometers.

Yet the pint-sized city has big ambitions, particularly for its two pillar industries, lithium and steel.

Xinyu has comparative advantages in developing the lithium industry. The lithium battery industry and production of its four key materials are witnessing rapid development in the city, where a relatively completed lithium battery industrial chain has formed.

Ganfeng Lithium Co Ltd, one of the world's leading lithium manufacturers, is headquartered in the Xinyu High-Tech Development Zone. It is noted as the first listed company in China's lithium industry. Listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2018, it became the first “A+H” synchronously listed company in the country's lithium industry.

The company's business runs through the whole industrial chain from lithium resource development at the upstream to lithium battery manufacturing and recycling at the downstream. It is the only enterprise in the lithium industry that has the industrialized extraction technologies to extract lithium from brine, ore and recycled materials.

The company's products are widely used in electric vehicles, energy storage, 3C products, chemicals and pharmaceuticals. As a supplier of lithium hydroxide, it is strategically tied with automotive giants such as Tesla, BMW and Volkswagen, and such battery giants as LG Chem.