Kaiyang seeks to become energy base

During the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), Kaiyang county in Guiyang, capital of Southwest China's Guizhou province, is making strong efforts to form an energy cluster.

Kaiyang is home to the highest concentration of the most high-quality phosphate rock in the country, with data showing that the proven reserves of phosphate rock in Kaiyang stand at 1.9 billion metric tons, while the prospective reserves stand at about 3 billion tons.

Since the late 1950s, the county has been developing its phosphorus and phosphorus chemical industries.

Kaiyang is home to the only large-scale pit production base in China that can produce high-concentration compound fertilizers without ore dressing, which is also the first circular economy phosphorus coal chemical ecological industry demonstration base in the country.

Zhang Qiuyan, deputy director of the Kaiyang bureau of industry and information technology said that in the past, the phosphorus chemical industry in the county was not profitable, with high costs and low added value.

This rough processing model was highly susceptible to fluctuations in the price of phosphate rock and prone to development difficulties.

To change the situation, efforts have been made by Kaiyang to promote the construction of the new energy power battery industry chain, as well as boost the transformation and upgrading of the basic phosphorus chemical industry to high-end and refinement.

In 2021, the Kaiyang county government signed an investment agreement with Zhongwei New Materials Co to build a 1-million-ton phosphorus-based material production base and a research institute in the county. The total investment of the projects reached 10 billion yuan ($1.39 billion).

As the world's largest comprehensive service provider of cathode precursor materials for lithium batteries, Zhongwei New Materials Co's ternary precursors and cobalt tetroxide market shares rank first in the world.

The projects will integrate phosphate rock, phosphating, ferrophosphorus, as well as iron and lithium recycling.