[Salta (Argentina) = E-Daily Reporter Park Min-woong ] After a 40-minute flight in a 16-seat light aircraft in the northwestern Argentine province of Salta, a vast brown wasteland stretching endlessly between the Andes Mountains at an elevation of 4,000 meters unfolded before my eyes. The clouds were close enough to touch, and the surrounding landscape felt as surreal as if I had landed on Mars, a scene I had only ever seen in photographs.
“Hombre Muerto.” Meaning “Dead Man” in Spanish, this vast salt lake was as desolate as its name suggests. However, POSCO—which recognized the growth potential of lithium early on—gave its project here a name with the exact opposite meaning: “Sal de Oro,” meaning “Golden Salt.”
On the 19th (local time), the upstream processing site of POSCO Holdings’ Brine Lithium Plant No. 1 in Hombre Muerto was operating at virtually full capacity, bustling with activity despite the bitter cold. This plant, operating in the middle of a barren wasteland, is the culmination of POSCO’s 16-year effort to achieve self-reliance in the lithium supply chain.
The importance of lithium in the global industrial landscape is growing steadily. Not only is it a key raw material for electric vehicle batteries, but the spread of artificial intelligence (AI) data centers has recently led to the energy storage system (ESS) market emerging as a new source of demand. This is why securing a stable lithium supply chain directly translates into corporate competitiveness.
POSCO is focusing its efforts specifically on Argentina because of the competitiveness of brine-based lithium. Lithium is broadly categorized into ore-based and brine-based lithium, with brine-based lithium accounting for about 40% of global production. One key advantage is its cost competitiveness, as production costs are lower than those of ore-based lithium, which requires mining and crushing rock.
In particular, Ombre Muerto is located in the “Lithium Triangle,” where approximately 65% of the world’s lithium reserves are concentrated, and it contains highly concentrated brine with an average lithium content of 921 mg per liter. In essence, it combines the three key factors of abundant resources, high quality, and cost competitiveness. POSCO has established itself as the only South Korean company to achieve self-sufficiency in the lithium supply chain—from raw materials to finished products—at this site.
It all began in 2010. At that time, POSCO proactively embarked on developing core technologies for extracting lithium from brine. In 2018, after establishing a subsidiary there, the company acquired the mining rights to the Salar de Ombre Muerto and began securing resources directly. Following exploration, technology validation, and plant construction, the company has been commercially producing battery-grade lithium since last year. In the second quarter of this year, the company even achieved its first quarterly profit from its Argentine brine-based lithium business. Sixteen years after entering the lithium business, the once-barren land has been transformed into POSCO’s “golden salt” production hub.
POSCO Holdings plans to develop the site into a lithium production base with an annual capacity of 100,000 metric tons (t) by 2033. Given that the current price of lithium hydroxide is around $18,000 per metric ton (approximately 25 million KRW), this would amount to an annual revenue of approximately $1.8 billion (approximately 2.5 trillion KRW).
