Boron exports hit record $1.3 billion: Minister

ANKARA

Türkiye’s boron sales generated a record $1.3 billion in export revenues this year, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Fatih Dönmez has said.

State-owned Eti Maden worked at 95 percent capacity, processing 2.65 million tons of boron, the minister said, adding that boron production and export revenues were 2.63 million tons and $1 billion in the previous year.

Türkiye has a 62 percent share in the global boron market.

The boron carbide facility in the western district of Bandırma, whose construction work began three years ago, will become operational in the first quarter of next year, Dönmez said, speaking at the second boron workshop held in Ankara.

A project to build a new boron carbide facility with a production capacity of 5,000 tons in the province of Kütayha will also be launched, the minister announced.

A tender for the production of lithium carbonate with an annual capacity of 600 tons will be held in January 2023 and construction work will commence shortly, while a second lithium carbonate plant in Bandırma with an annual capacity of 100 tons is also in the pipeline, Dönmez said.

“Those two facilities will have a total lithium production capacity of 700 tons, and we will be able to meet 50 percent of Türkiye’s lithium need domestically.”

The minister also announced that a pilot facility in the district of Beylikova in the province of Eskişehir, with a capacity of processing annually 1,200 tons of rare earth elements will come online in February 2023.

This plant’s capacity will eventually increase to 570 tons when it becomes fully operational, according to Dönmez.

Türkiye discovered 694 million tons of rare earth elements reserves, the second largest in the world in Beylikova.