By Yuka Obayashi
TOKYO, April 13 (Reuters) - Japanese trading house Mitsubishi Corp is looking to invest in nickel and lithium projects to meet growing demand for electric vehicle (EV) batteries, while boosting its copper output, the head of its metal operations said on Thursday.
The move comes as global push by automakers to electrify their fleets has sparked a rush for stable supplies of lithium, nickel and copper and other critical minerals. Demand is expected to exceed supply by the end of the decade. "As global resource companies and others are looking for lithium and nickel, we are considering to invest in the two metals," Satoshi Koyama, Mitsubishi's mineral resources group CEO, told an analysts meeting.
Canada and Australia could be investment targets for nickel as they meet both the criteria of safety from the perspective of geopolitical risk and access to renewable power from the perspective of decarbonisation, he said. Last year, Mitsubishi bought a 15% stake in a joint venture with Giga Metals Corp to pursue the development of the Turnagain nickel deposit in Canada. "We are verifying what kind of nickel projects will make it to the profitability line, given technical hurdles and cost issues," Koyama said. Mitsubishi is also looking into a number of lithium projects.
To develop a new mine, it must come with the downstream operation to process the metal into raw battery material, but whether it can be done in Australia and North America will be the biggest challenge, Koyama said. Mitsubishi and its joint venture partner BHP Group in Australia have put up for sale their Daunia and Blackwater metallurgical coal mines in Queensland's Bowen Basin.
"If the deal comes through, we may allocate the cash into growth segments such as copper and battery metals," Koyama said. Mitsubishi, which owns a stake in five copper mines in South America, including 40% stake in Anglo American's Quellaveco mine in Peru, wants to bolster its copper output by expanding the existing mines and investing in new promising projects, Koyama said.
(Reporting by Yuka Obayashi; Editing by Kim Coghill)
