Altech Chemicals Provides Update and Demand on HPA Plant

Altech Chemicals (ASX:ATC) is an Australian company which is also listed on the ASX. The company’s mission is to build a 4,000 tonne per annum High Purity Alumina (HPA) project, based in Western Australia as well as in Malaysia.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Advancing the project in all sectors, currently in the debt funding stage.
• Advanced the detail design of the HPA plant, through a German contractor, called M+W Group.
• Working on the permitting process for both projects to take place.
• Ten-year offtake agreement with Mitsubishi Corp (TYO: 8058) where all of the company’s product is basically sold to Mitsubishi.
• Last year the company raised $10 million to support the development on the project.

Altech Chemicals Limited Managing Director Iggy Tan provides an update on the company’s High Purity Alumina Plan and demand.

“High Purity Alumina at 99.99 per cent is used mainly in the LED industry. So sapphire wafers are created from High Purity Alumina. Now the sapphire is exactly the same gemstones that you wear on your ring. So in Mother Nature, sapphire is created by alumina under intense pressure and temperature. So nearly 2,000 degrees alumina melts and it creates sapphire gemstone. Now today, mankind has the technology to make artificial sapphire, or synthetic sapphire and it’s exactly the same sapphire. The only reason natural sapphire has the colour of blue, is because of impurities in the alumina that creates the colour.”

“So when you’re making synthetic sapphire for your watch face or the camera lense on your iPhone, you don’t want a blue tinge. So therefore, you need to start with a very High Purity Alumina feedstock. And that’s the material that we intend to produce for the LED industry. Now the LED industry is growing at about 70 per cent, year-on-year, and you can see that all around you. So all our traffic lights, vehicles, domestic lighting, billboards have all gone to LEDs, because the LED lighting is 90 per cent more efficient that the conventional lighting. So the world is moving towards the more efficient lighting of the LED industry.”

“The other area that’s plenty of growth is in the lithium battery sector. So High Purity Alumina is used in lithium batteries to prevent fires. They’re actually coating it to the separators that separate the cathode and the anode, and that actually makes them fire retardant. So that’s another exciting area of growth.”

Altech Chemicals Limited is aiming to become one of the world’s leading producers of 99.99% high purity alumina. HPA is a high-value, high margin and highly demanded product as it is the critical ingredient required for the production of synthetic sapphire. Synthetic sapphire is used in the manufacture of substrates for LED semiconductor wafers used in the electronic industry; which is scratch-resistant sapphire glass used for wristwatch faces, optical windows and smartphone components. An emerging use for HPA is as a coating for lithium battery separators. There is currently no substitute for HPA in the manufacture of synthetic sapphire.

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