Ganfeng Lithium said on Monday that a company that it had invested in to explore for lithium in the Xinjiang region is shutting down after finding no suitable projects to develop.
Xinkuang Ganfeng Lithium was established last year for mining exploration but never started operations and is “in the process of deregistering”, China’s top lithium company said in a response online to an investor’s question.
Ganfeng Zhongkai Mining Technology, a joint venture between Ganfeng Lithium and manufacturing company Jiangsu Nonghua Intelligent Agriculture Technology, held a 49% stake in the Xinjiang company, according to company information database Qichacha.
A U.S. congressional committee last month sought an explanation from the State Department as to why it had not implemented sanctions on more Chinese officials, as well as dozens of Xinjiang-related companies, including Xinkuang Ganfeng, Ganfeng Zhongkai and Ganfeng Lithium.
Washington has banned goods produced in Xinjiang and by companies identified on the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List (UFLPA), which are believed to use forced labour from the region.
The decision to deregister Xinkuang was made in the first half of this year, Sun Yifan, marketing director at Ganfeng Lithium, told Reuters, but took time to implement.
All Xinkuang investors filed an application to deregister the company on Sept. 27, according to a file on Qichacha.
State-owned Xinjiang Geology and Mineral Investment, which held 51% of Xinkuang, did not respond to a request for comment.
Ganfeng also said “the company has not bought any lithium ore from the Xinjiang region, nor does it have any assets or conduct any actual operations in the Xinjiang region.”
Xinjiang has large, relatively untapped reserves of the metal used to make batteries for electric vehicles.
Chengdu Tianqi Lithium and Xinjiang Nonferrous Metal Industry were also named in the U.S. committee’s letter.
None of the firms immediately responded to a request for comment.
