South Korean companies are relying on the US showing greater flexibility over China’s role in electric vehicle supply chains, as they invest heavily — often with Chinese partners — in battery materials production in Indonesia.
A $441mn investment last month by Korean metals giant Posco in a nickel smelting plant on the Indonesian island of Halmahera has taken South Korea’s hard-cash dealmaking in the south-east Asian country to more than $3bn since the start of 2022, the bulk of it being battery-related.
Indonesia is the world’s largest producer of nickel, a crucial ingredient that Korea’s leading EV battery companies need for the multibillion-dollar factories they are building in the US.