Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced financial support for four technology sector manufacturing projects, including a vanadium processing plant.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) supplies most of the world’s cobalt, but exporting semi-finished or finished products rather than raw materials would better help the country capture the value of the metal used in high power lithium-ion batteries.
The government of Queensland will commit “at least AU$10 million (US$7.21 million)” to building a multi-user vanadium processing plant to capitalise on natural resources in the Australian state.
China has once again been ranked top for involvement in the global lithium-ion battery supply chain by BloombergNEF, but for the first time the US has come in second amid a policy rush to support the domestic industry.