A partnership of China's Huayou Cobalt, American carmaker Ford Motor, and Brazilian miner Vale at a nickel-cobalt project in Indonesia is advancing with a USD3.8 billion joint-venture agreement.

Huayou's unit Huaqi Singapore signed a deal with Ford Motor, PT Vale Indonesia, and PT Kolaka Nickel Indonesia, the JV, to help KNI build a wet smelting project to produce nickel hydroxide and cobalt at the Pomalaa mine in Southeast Sulawesi with an annual output of 120,000 tons of nickel equivalent, the Zhejiang province-based firm announced yesterday.

The project has been in the works for a while. In April 2022, Huayou announced that it is planning to team up with the Brazilian mining giant on the Pomalaa project. A few months after in July, the Chinese firm said Ford would join the group so Huayou would supply about 84,000 tons of nickel equivalent to Ford every year.

Ford will subscribe to 8.5 percent of KNI's newly issued shares, per the release yesterday. After that, Huaqi Singapore will hold 73.2 percent of KNI and Vale Indonesia will have a share of 18.3 percent. In an agreed time period, the American carmaker could raise its stake to 17 percent while Vale could own up to 30 percent.

The subsidiary of Huayou has already penned agreements with Vale and Ford about rights to products of the mine.

In the first three quarters of this year, Huayou achieved revenue of CNY51.1 billion (USD7.1 billion), rising by 5 percent from a year earlier, while its net profit climbed by 0.2 percent to CNY3 billion (USD420 million).