Bondalti invests in lithium from 2022
The Iberian industrial chemicals firm Bondalti – a José de Mello Group company — will begin investing in lithium refining in 2022 after having signed a 18-month agreement with the Australian company Reed Advanced Materials worth €4 million.
According to Jornal de Negócios, the goal is to construct a pilot plant in Estarreja in the Aveiro district at Portugal’s largest chemical company, in a project that will draw funding from Portugal’s Resilience and Recovery Plan (RRP).
The plant will be built in the second half of 2022 and should come on line at the start of 2023 according to the company’s CEO, Luís Delgado.
The future plan should produce around 25,000 tonnes per year, divided between lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate.
Moreover, the investment will initially mean taking on around 10 staff, with some personnel already being hired at both project and operational levels for the pilot programme.
Bondalti operates under a traditional model, from their industrial facilities in Portugal and Spain, supplying the national and international market – Spain, Italy, France, Belgium, the United Kingdom and Germany, offering competitive prices and flexible services, and ensuring a range of solutions of high performance and efficiency.
In the Industrial Chemicals business unit, Bondalti mainly focuses on the following two supply chains:
• Aniline and derivatives in the organic chemicals sector
• Chloralkalis in the inorganic chemicals sector
Bondalti favours the Over-the-Fence model in which clients and suppliers work in an integrated manner, as partners, establishing long term, well integrated partnerships, where each entity is focused on the activities that it specialises in and knows best, allowing for more efficiency, transparency and stringency in the development of industrial production, as well as in the reduction of risks and of additional waste.