(Yicai) Oct. 9 -- Jiangsu Lopal Tech said its Singaporean unit, which owns the Chinese firm’s lithium battery materials plant in Indonesia, will likely receive an investment of as much as USD200 million from Indonesia's sovereign wealth fund and others.

The Indonesia Investment Authority and other parties will inject the capital into Singapore-based LBM New Energy, Lopal said yesterday, citing a non-binding letter of intent signed on the same day. LBM New Energy will remain a Lopal unit, though no details were provided about post-investment shareholdings.

Lopal, one of the world's top three suppliers of lithium-iron phosphate cathode materials, is spending USD290 million building a plant in Semarang, Central Java province with an annual production capacity of 120,000 tons of LFP. The first phase, with annual output of 30,000 tons, is already operational.

The Nanjing-based company said in February last year that LBM New Energy owns 99.97 percent of the project.

This February, Lopal received a CNY7 billion (USD990.7 million) long-term supply order from LG Energy Solution. Lopal unit Changzhou Liyuan New Energy Technology will supply 160,000 tons of LFP cathode materials to the South Korean power battery giant from this year to 2028.

Compared with the ternary lithium batteries widely used by electric vehicle manufacturers in the past, LFP batteries are cheaper to produce, safer, and more environmentally friendly. Indonesia, a country that has ample nickel resources, has long been a major supplier of cathode materials for ternary lithium batteries.

Shares of Lopal [SHA: 603906] closed down 2.1 percent at CNY9.73 (USD1.38) each in Shanghai today, as China's stock market starts to cool after recent stellar gains. Stocks have soared since Sept. 24, when the government took steps to boost market confidence and the economy. Lopal is up 44 percent since then.

Editor: Martin Kadiev