CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A new mine exploration company expects to spend $500 million over the coming five years to bring battery-grade lithium mining back to western Gaston County and adjoining Cleveland County.
The goal is to restore that area as a lithium mecca, harking back to a time from the mid-1950s to the mid-1990s when almost all of the world’s supply of the chemical element came from two mines west of Gastonia. The auto industry’s rapid move toward electric-powered vehicles is expected to drive booming demand for the lithium needed to fuel batteries.
Piedmont Lithium expects to make a final decision during the fourth quarter of 2019 about whether to mine and process lithium in the Charlotte region. If that decision is a yes, construction of the mine should start in late 2019. Engineering work on a $340 million chemical plant for processing the lithium will begin about that same time.
That chemical-processing plant would be completed two years later, and refined lithium would go to market from western Gaston for the first time in more than 25 years.
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