Altech Chemicals Ltd (ASX:ATC) (FRA:A3Y) managing director Iggy Tan updates Proactive Investors on the company's project development, and educates on High Purity Alumina (HPA) applications and markets.
Currently worth about US$40,000 per tonne, HPA is in high demand as it is a critical feedstock for the production of synthetic sapphire, which in turn is used in the creation of LED lights, screens from watches to windows, and batteries.
"We're going to build a 4,500 tonne per annum plant, but the growth in [demand] is so strong that we expect there will be 20 times our plant in growth by 2025... we are the only project in the world today that's at funding stage... we have a totally different process, we're disruptive, and we find that our cost of production is nearly a third of the conventional cost," says Tan.
The company is mining kaolin as a feedstock in Western Australia, and will be processing it into HPA at a facility which is contracted to be built in Malaysia under a turnkey agreement. Financing and underwriting has been secured, and a ten year offtake agreement is already in place with Mitsubishi.
