中联控股即将收购阿根廷Arizaro锂项目

Insight

Bnamericas Published: Saturday, May 23, 2026

Lithium Chile is fine-tuning the final details to sell its project of lithium Arizaro, in the Argentine province of Salta, to China Union Holdings through a US$175 million (mn) transaction. The asset has production potential of 25,000t/a of lithium carbonate equivalent.

The transaction will be carried out through the sale of Argentum Lithium, the Argentine subsidiary of Canada’s Lithium Chile, which indirectly holds the mining rights over the Arizaro salt flat.

According to the 2024 pre-feasibility study, enabling Arizaro entails an estimated total capital of US$1.3 billion (bn) and an operation with a useful life of 20 years. It is planned to use a direct extraction technology and an average annual brine extraction flow rate of 660L/s is estimated, with an average lithium concentration of 273mg/L.

96% of Lithium Chile shareholders approved the sale at the last shareholders’ meeting held on May 15.

As part of the process, the operation already has the regulatory approvals from the province of Salta, and China Union Holdings, based in Shenzhen, is processing the corresponding authorization for outward direct investment (ODI) to transfer the funds before June 30, 2026.

Steve Cochrane, CEO of Lithium Chile, commented this year in an interview with a Canadian media outlet that China Union Holdings is capable of financing a project of Arizaro’s magnitude.

After amassing a large fortune in the Chinese real estate sector, the China Union holding company decided to diversify into lithium as that market began to slow down. Thus, in 2023 they began to analyze lithium projects in Bolivia and Argentina.

"They analyzed three projects, with Arizaro being one of them, and they confirmed that ours was the one that promised the best potential and return. That’s how they approached us in 2024 to make a deal," Cochrane said about the start of the negotiations, which are now close to being completed through the transfer of the Argentine asset to Asian capital."

(The original version of this content was written in Spanish)

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