Korea Zinc says US smelter’s waste pile has $3 billion in metal

Korea Zinc Co. says it can process about $3 billion worth of leftover metal from an old US smelter it plans to convert into a giant critical minerals complex.

The company — one of the world’s largest processors of zinc and other metals — bought the Nyrstar processing plant in Clarksville, Tennessee, in December and now plans to invest $7.4 billion to expand and refurbish it.

The supply would give a boost to US President Donald Trump’s push to secure a domestic supply of minerals that are essential for consumer electronics, robotics and defense technology. China dominates the critical minerals sector, leaving US industries dependent on foreign imports of the material.

The site already holds a load of waste material that contains key metals like zinc, copper, lead, silver and germanium, according to chief executive officer Yun B. Choi.

“It’s quite attractive for us,” Choi said Wednesday in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “This is actually a huge bonus that comes with the plant and it will provide us with a very secure source of germanium and gallium and other things that US industries are quite interested in securing.”

Choi estimates the site, which previously was owned by commodities trading house Trafigura Group, holds about 600,000 tons of the discarded material — equivalent to more than $3 billion at today’s prices. Processing it all would likely take six or seven years, he added.

The expansion has the backing of the US government and JPMorgan Chase & Co. Korea Zinc has said it will start the project this year, with commercial operations beginning in 2029. The company has yet to secure raw materials from other operations to feed into the smelter, which makes the on-site waste material key to supply, Choi said.

“We are definitely technically capable of extracting the metals that are contained within the site and extract profit from it, too,” he said.

The CEO also said he sought assurances from the Trump administration that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement would not detain Korean workers at the site. Last year, law enforcement arrested 475 people in a raid at Hyundai Motor Co.’s battery plant in Georgia.

“We had a conversation with the US and we received very, very robust assurances that they will never,” said Choi. “It will not happen.”

The plans come at a time when Korea Zinc is also embroiled in an ownership dispute, sparked last year after its top shareholder launched an unsolicited takeover bid for the Seoul-based firm.

Following the announcement in December, Young Poong Corp., Korea Zinc’s biggest investor, argued the company made the smelter deal to shore up the CEO’s management control rather than serve the company’s business interests.

Choi on Wednesday refuted that take.

“The argument that this deal was done solely because of me wanting the US being a white night or some other ridiculous interpretation of this deal is, I think, quite outlandish,” he said. “Just saying this out loud, I think it kind of reveals how ridiculous that sounds.”

(By Alex Longley and Jacob Lorinc)