Y-TEC (YPF-Technology) president, Roberto Salvarezza, confirmed this Tuesday that next December production of “cells” for lithium batteries will begin in Argentina, a project deployed by YPF that aims to develop “from salt flats to batteries”.

“We are advancing rapidly with industrial plants,” Salvarezza assured Tuesday morning in a statement to Radio Nacional, on the eve of President Alberto Fernández’s visit to the Y-TEC facility, in the Berisso district of Buenos Aires.

In this sense, he said that “civil work in industrial plants has been completed”.

“In October the equipment will arrive and in December the industrial production of these cells for lithium batteries will be ready,” completes the former Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation.

When asked about the current lithium production process in Argentina, Salvarezza commented: “For many years, at Y-TEC we had a pilot plant working and producing cells with a material produced in our country, lithium carbonate, with usable carbon from domestically sourced sources.”

For this “we provide ourselves with lithium carbonate to produce cells for the coming year from companies that extract lithium carbonate and export it,” he added.

“Lithium is very important and we have a geopolitical dispute over this resource, which is owned by Latin America. But in turn, YPF is deploying a project, through YPF Lithium, created last year by the company’s president, Pablo González, which will be dedicated to salt plain extraction and lithium carbonate production”, Salvarezza anticipates.

The project, as he points out, aims to produce a complete production “from salt flats to batteries”, with “a look of environmental concern and social articulation”.

Similarly, the official thought that “YPF extracts gas and oil, but also produces, processes and industrializes lubricants, gasoline, fuels in our country”, and “we think the same for lithium”, he said.

“YPF will be in the salt flat extraction brine, but at the same time process it to achieve lithium carbonate,” he projected.

AGREEMENT WITH BOLIVIA

Salvarezza refers to the scientific-technological cooperation agreement between Y-TEC and Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB) for the production of lithium-ion cells and batteries, which was signed on July 28.

“With Bolivia, we share all the challenges in lithium industrialization, we are very interested in the development and technology of various materials used in batteries; We are also very interested in being able to achieve a direct extraction method, which avoids excessive water loss,” he stressed in that regard.

“Lithium is very important and we have a geopolitical dispute to get this resource, which is owned by Latin America, which is owned by the lithium triangle, and we have to be players,” said the head of Y-TEC.

Finally, he stated: “We are on a path that will take time, but it is leading from knowledge to technology application and technology sovereignty.”