Posco Holdings has held the groundbreaking ceremony for the first lithium hydroxide factory in South Korea, at the Yulchon Industrial Complex in South Jeolla province. The company will invest over $450 million up to completion in 2025. It will be able to produce about 25,000 tonnes/year, enough for some 600,000 electric vehicles.

Yulchon is already home to the Posco Future M subsidiary’s cathode material facility. A lithium ore plant is also being built there and it will eventually host a secondary battery material facility.

Japan’s DIC Corporation has acquired PCAS Canada from PCAS, a legacy subsidiary of Seqens, for an enterprise value of €82 million, and has renamed it Innovation DIC Chimitroniques. This follows agreement by both boards and the workers’ council.

PCAS Canada has a facility near Montreal producing photoresists for semiconductor photolithography, an area in which DIC expects substantial growth. DIC will combine these with its own syntheis technologies and will continue to invest in the site.

Global lithium chemicals companies Allkem and Livent have reached a definitive agreement to combine in an all-stock merger of equals valuing the combined company at $10.6 billion. The agreement is expected to close by the end of 2023. Allkem and Livent shareholders will hold about 56% and 44% respectively of the stock.

IMCD has acquired three companies in recent weeks, two in Israel and one in Colombia. Terms were not disclosed in any of the deals. The three are:

* The import and distribution business of Tagra Biotechnologies, an Israeli distributor and supplier of raw materials and ingredients for cosmetics and personal care

* KOI Products Solutions, an Israeli distributor of speciality products mainly for the composite, paint, cosmetics, coatings and ink markets

* Allianz Group International, a distributor of APIs in Colombia T

Fujifilm has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire KMG Corporation, the semiconductor high purity process chemicals (HPPC) business of Entegris for $700 million. This will bring it 12 new sites, including seven manufacturing sites in the US, Europe and Singapore, employing about 560.

The company said that it will now be able to offer a wider range of electronic chemicals, including KMG’s line of HPPCs for etching and cleaning silicon wafers. It will also add KMG’s Total Chemical Management (TCM) business, which includes logistical services in Southeast Asia and Europe.

Evonik has begun construction of a new production plant for alkoxides on Jurong Island in Singapore. Described as a “mid double-digit million-euro investment” this will complement sites in Germany, Argentina and the US, supplying the growing Asia-Pacific market when it comes onstream at the end of 2024. The aim is to achieve zero Scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions.

Vulcan Energy Resources and Nobian have announced today that they have signed a term sheet for a proposed strategic partnership aiming to jointly develop and operate a lithium hydroxide plant for electric vehicle batteries in Germany. This builds on 15 months of collaboration between the two firms but is not legally binding on the two parties in most respects.