Ford will enlist the help of partners from different countries around the world to open a new nickel processing plant in Indonesia. The construction will cost $4.5 billion USD, but the company argues that it will unlock a cheap source of traction battery manufacturing resources.
Companies from Indonesia and China will join in on the project. The former country has the world’s richest nickel deposits, but its government put a ban exporting raw nickel ore three years ago. To circumvent the ban, companies must invest in the country by building processing factories there.
Ford hopes to eventually reach a mining volume of 120,000 metric tons of raw materials per year. The company will use it to make cathodes for lithium-ion batteries. Per Ford, its chosen processing approach counts among the most cost-efficient ones in the industry and will make electric cars noticeably cheaper.
By 2026, the automaker hopes to raise the annual EV production volume to 2,000,000 units.