Ultra-high purity alumina (HPA) and related aluminium materials manufacturer Alpha HPA is making significant headway with its breakthrough technology to combat rising lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery fires, with flame-testing confirming the safety benefits of its UltraCoat process.

The UltraCoat process uses Alpha HPA’s proprietary, ultra-high-purity Al-Nitrate precursor to apply, at a controlled thickness, high-purity aluminium-oxide and hydroxide coatings to a range of surfaces within the Li-ion battery environment.

Flame-testing has now confirmed that aluminium Li-ion cell casings using the UltraCoat process can withstand more than 1 000 ˚C thermal runaway conditions for over nine minutes, as opposed to less than 15 seconds on uncoated aluminium cell casings.

Meanwhile, Alpha HPA’s 10-ha Gladstone-based project will be capable of producing 10 000 t/y of products, creating 120 ongoing local jobs on top of the 300 jobs created during construction.

Alpha HPA MD Rimas Kairaitis announced site establishment for Stage Two of one of the largest single site ultra-HPA refineries in the world had started earlier this month, with extensive funding support in place to progress to full-scale production.

“Key earthworks and civil contractors have now started site establishment activities ahead of the imminent start of project earthworks,’’ Kairaitis said.

He added that contractors had started mobilising equipment and support infrastructure, and Australian energy company Ergon had started power line burial ahead of the start of earthworks. “Alpha HPA’s construction management team is now fully established in Gladstone.”

The construction milestone followed the previously announced A$400-million government debt facility secured to fund Stage Two development, plus A$180-million raised in equity, with strong support from 5% shareholder chemicals manufacturer Orica.

Orica MD and CEO Sanjeev Gandhi and the Federal Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen visited the Gladstone site to tour the established Stage One facility and the cleared Stage Two site.

“With financing and line of sight to commercial production in place, Alpha HPA is experiencing a pickup in larger volume sample sales for final testing with global Tier 1 end-users,’’ Kairaitis added.

He said Stage Two construction would take about two years, with first production anticipated in the second half of 2026.

Alpha HPA’s “state-of-the-art” Stage Two facility will leverage the established Stage One operation, and Alpha HPA’s novel process intellectual propriety.

Its proprietary process technology offers a unique opportunity to manufacture a range ultra-HPA material that is cost competitive, low-carbon and that leverages the established industrial infrastructure in Gladstone.

The innovative process allows for the extraction and purification of aluminium from industrial feedstock, producing materials of “exceptional purity for high-technology applications, including the semiconductor, Li-ion batteries and LED lighting sectors”.

In parallel, Alpha HPA continues to advance its complementary downstream Alpha Sapphire business.

Alpha Sapphire has maintained successful growth cycles of high-quality synthetic sapphire boules from the initial two sapphire growth units in Gladstone.

“Additional sapphire boules have now been dispatched for processing to synthetic sapphire wafers to service qualification enquiries for both LED and semiconductor end-users,’’ Kairaitis concluded.