GM and Posco form joint venture to produce battery cathode active materials for North America

Gasgoo News on May 27, POSCO Chemical announced that it has officially finalized the establishment of a joint venture Ultium CAM with General Motors. The two companies will jointly invest US$327 million to form the joint venture.Posco CEO Min Kyung-Zoon and GM Executive Vice President of Global Product Development, Procurement and Supply Chain Doug Parks attended the signing ceremony and signed the agreement on behalf of their respective companies.

At the end of 2021, POSCO and GM announced that they would jointly create a joint venture to produce cathode active materials (CAM) for North America, in which POSCO and GM would hold 85% and 15%, respectively.Earlier this year, the companies announced that the joint venture would build a 30,000-ton-a-year plant in Quebec, Canada.Construction of the plant will start in August this year and is scheduled to be completed in the second half of 2024.The Ultium CAM joint venture plans to produce thousands of tons of material annually, mainly for GM's Ultium Cells plant in the United States.

Posco will expand its cooperation with GM through the establishment of joint ventures and related supply agreements to supply more cathode active materials in North America.In December 2020, Posco was selected as the cathode active material supplier for Ultium Cells.For stable orders, the company plans to build a production line with an annual output of 60,000 tons in Gwangyang, South Korea.

Ulitum CAM is the first attempt by an automobile company and a battery material company to establish a cathode active material joint venture. The two companies look forward to expanding cooperation in raw material procurement, research and development, marketing, etc. through this joint venture to expand their participation in the globalelectric vehiclemarket. Spend.Cathode active materials account for about 40% of a battery's cost and are probably the most important material in the electric vehicle industry.

In addition, POSCO Chemical will establish a holding company, POSCO Chemical Canada, which will be responsible for North American investments.Following South Korea and China, Posco will manufacture cathode materials through joint ventures in North America, and will expand into Europe and Indonesia to build a global mass production base centered on major markets for electric vehicles.

Posco plans to increaseannual production280,000 tons by 2025, and 610,000 tons by 2030.The company also plans to expand annual anode production from 84,000 tonnes to 150,000 tonnes by 2025 and to 320,000 tonnes by 2030.

"The Ultium CAM joint venture will support GM's rapid scale-up of electric vehicle production as we build a more sustainable, North American-focused supply chain," said Doug Parks, executive vice president of global product development, procurement and supply chain at GM. ."

GM and Posco previously announced plans to form a CAM machining joint venture in December 2021.In March 2022, the two companies announced that they would build a factory in Bécancour, Quebec, Canada.