Ford Motors has signed an 11-year deal with Nemaska Lithium to supply lithium products for use in electric vehicle batteries.
According to a press release dated May 22, 2023, Ford will become Nemaska’s first customer and will use lithium hydroxide produced at the Bécancour facility about 150 kilometers (93 miles) northeast of Montreal for manufacturing its electric vehicle batteries.
Ford will buy up to 13,000 tons a year of lithium hydroxide produced at the Nemaska factory, currently under construction. It is slated to open in 2026 and is expected to be the first of its kind in Canada.
Nemaska is co-owned by Quebec’s economic development agency, Investissement Québec, and Livent, a Philadelphia-based lithium company and a global leader in lithium technology.
The factory will convert spodumene concentrate, a lithium ore mined at Nemaska’s Whabouchi mine in the James Bay region of northern Quebec, to lithium hydroxide.
The mine is scheduled to begin producing lithium ore in 2025, which will then be processed at the Bécancour plant when it opens the following year.
“This agreement is a vote of confidence for the solidity of the project, of the quality of the product that will be produced, and, of course, a testament to the effort of the Nemaska teams,” Steve Gartner, the chief financial officer of Nemaska Lithium, said in an interview Monday.
“We are proud to work with Nemaska Lithium and its partners, Livent and Investissement Québec. The Nemaska Lithium project will be a sustainable source of lithium, supporting Ford’s ability to scale and helping us make EVs more accessible and affordable over time to millions of customers,” said Lisa Drake, Ford’s vice president of EV Industrialization, Model e.
CTV News Canada is reporting that last summer, the Quebec government, and Livent announced they would each invest $80 million to fund the studies and preparatory work necessary to resume construction of the mine and to begin construction of the Bécancour plant.
A previous version of the company, under different ownership, entered creditor protection in 2019, losing Investissement Québec $71 million. In 2020, the province took over the project with a private-sector partner and committed to spending up to $300 million on the relaunch of Nemaska.
