It was the Minister of Mining herself, Aurora Williams, who maintained that this new institution will be created during June, “so that, effectively, it will be established before the end of the year.”

The Government of Chile, through the Ministry of Mining, reported that during this month of June it is expected to create the so-called “Public Technological and Research Institute for Lithium and Salares”, all framed in the National Lithium Strategy.

It was the Minister of Mining herself, Aurora Williams, who maintained that this new institution will be created during June, “so that, effectively, it will be established before the end of the year in the sense that we can have an executive director and his board, and start operating,” he said in a seminar held at Exponor 2024.

Along these lines, the Secretary of State pointed out that there is a significant amount of resources committed by the Ministry of Science and the Production Promotion Corporation (Corfo) for the creation of the Institute, to which is added the relevance of this mineral and copper to advance solutions to confront climate change.

He also highlighted the challenges of the industry regarding “an increasingly sustainable exploitation, not only from the social point of view, but also from the point of view of environmental balances.”

They announce the creation of a public lithium and salt flats institute

The Government's policies on lithium have been under discussion again, after the agreement between Codelco and SQM for the exploitation of the Salar de Atacama was approved, which has met with criticism and opposition from both political sectors and the shareholder of the company. non-metallic mining, Tianqi.

However, the news has been highlighted by President Gabriel Boric, who even mentioned it in the last Public Account, highlighting that the association would consolidate Chile's role as one of the market leaders and that, even, our country "will have the control of the largest lithium production source on the planet.”

On the other hand, Enami reported that the results on liti concentration in the Salar Aguilar (of the Salares Altoandinos project) showed “promising” results, confirming that the project would be “one of the most important in the world,” according to its executive vice president, Iván Mlynarz.