Rimas Kairaitis
Alpha HPA – a $200 million, high purity alumina industrial plant – will be based in Gladstone, Queensland.
Sites were also considered in Newcastle, New South Wales and Kwinana, Western Australia.
“High purity alumina is a rapidly-growing market, being fuelled by the rising demand for high-technology items, such as lithium-ion battery separators used in electric vehicles, particularly in China and Europe,” Queensland state development minister Cameron Dick says.
Alpha HPA’s solvent extraction pilot.
A 9.2-hectare site in the Gladstone State Development Area owned by the state government has been selected near the Port of Gladstone.
Alpha HPA managing director Rimas Kairaitis says it’s an exciting time for the Australian company as it progresses from a pilot plant to a large-scale advanced manufacturing business.
“The Gladstone site enables us to be within two kilometres of Orica, who we have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with to be our supplier of key process reagents and the offtake of the by-product for the project, creating a circular economy process,” he says.
“A successful pilot plant has been operating in Brisbane since July 2019, and using a low-cost extraction process we are producing around 3kg daily of about 99.99% pure alumina.
“We believe there is building global demand for our high purity alumina, with circa 70 lithium ion battery mega-factories under construction across four continents to meet the electric vehicle demand.”
