Eramet Centenario Lithium Plant in Argentina: DLE Lessons for European Suppliers

What is the Eramet Centenario lithium plant in Argentina?

In July 2024, Eramet commissioned its first lithium plant in the Argentine highlands. The site sits on the Salar de Centenario-Ratones in Salta Province, at just under 4,000 metres above sea level. The plant is designed to produce 24,000 tonnes of battery-grade lithium carbonate per year — sufficient, by Eramet's own estimates, to supply the batteries for around 600,000 electric vehicles annually.

Argentina's position in the global lithium supply chain has been building for years; Centenario is its most technically ambitious expression to date.

What sets Centenario apart from other lithium projects in the region is its technology. Direct Lithium Extraction — DLE — compresses what the conventional evaporation process requires 12 to 18 months to achieve into roughly one week. Recovery rates reach approximately 90 percent of the lithium contained in the brine, compared with 40 to 50 percent under the evaporation method.

The process uses adsorbent materials to extract lithium directly from brine, which is then rinsed using brackish water drawn from around 100 metres below the surface. Over 60 percent of the process water is recycled within the system.

Why is Centenario important for the lithium supply chain?

Centenario is not only another lithium project in Argentina. It is a live test of whether industrial-scale DLE can operate under the physical, logistical and regulatory conditions of the Andean highlands.

The project was originally developed as a joint venture with Chinese raw materials group Tsingshan, which held a 49.9 percent stake. In October 2024, Eramet bought back Tsingshan's entire interest for $699 million and has since owned Centenario outright. Combined with the Phase 1 construction investment of approximately $870 million, Eramet is now the sole owner of the world's first western-operated industrial-scale DLE plant — and bears the project risk alone.

That matters for every supplier in the chain. Once a project of this type is owned and operated by one industrial group, external technology providers are not simply selling equipment. They are becoming part of a risk architecture in which failure can delay ramp-up, increase capex and damage confidence in a new extraction model.

What went wrong at Eramet Centenario in 2025?

The DLE technology itself worked. That was the good news from the first year of operation. The bad news: an external supplier set Eramet back significantly.

In Q1 2025, the plant was blocked by a technical failure in a key component of the Forced Evaporation unit — the stage of the process that concentrates the treated brine into lithium carbonate. The fault did not originate in Eramet's own process. It was a design issue on the supplier's side.

The result was visible in production. Eramet had targeted production of 10 to 13 kilotonnes for 2025. Centenario produced 6.7 kt-LCE across the full year, with just 710 tonnes in the first half alone.

Direct capital costs for 2025 rose by approximately €30 million as a result, bringing the year's total capex to around €110 million. That is the accounting side. The opportunity cost of lost production volume — a figure that does not appear in external communications but would be factored into any serious project evaluation — sits on top of that.

The supplier failure was not a minor setback; it handed Eramet a loss of control over its own ramp-up at one of the most critical moments in the project's lifecycle.

Why does high altitude change supplier risk in lithium projects?

Centenario is not an isolated case, even if its technical specifics are project-dependent. The underlying pattern of high altitude, water scarcity, absent infrastructure and long permitting cycles is broadly familiar from comparable industrial and resource projects across the Andean highlands.

What changes from project to project is the technological context. What remains constant is the operational terrain.

Highland engineering is not a transfer task

What qualifies as a validated solution at sea level must be re-qualified for 3,900 to 4,200 metres. Air pressure, temperature swings, UV intensity and extreme aridity affect material properties, sealing behaviour, control electronics and thermal processes in ways that standard specifications do not capture.

The supplier whose Forced Evaporation design brought Centenario to a standstill for months apparently underestimated precisely this gap between laboratory validation and operational reality. The cost consequences fell on the client.

European providers rarely fail in the Argentine highlands because they cannot access the market. They fail because they assume their technology is transferable without site-specific requalification — and that service capability in the field means the same thing it does in a European industrial park.

Logistics is a structural risk factor

The Salar de Centenario lies far from any reliable industrial infrastructure. Spare parts, remediation work and additional contractor deployments run through supply chains that standard project cost models do not adequately account for.

A supplier who needs to correct a design fault during the commissioning phase pays not only for the technical remediation, but for logistics costs, waiting times and production losses that behave differently at 4,000 metres than on flat terrain.

Water is a permitting reality, not only an ESG topic

Eramet recycles over 60 percent of its process water. That is the communicated figure. The real bottleneck for future permitting is the direct reinjection of depleted brine back into the salar's aquifers — a step that is technically complex, hydrogeologically difficult to model and not yet fully defined in regulatory terms.

Argentine environmental organisations monitor the water balance of DLE projects closely; the relevant provincial authorities operate with considerable discretionary power. Suppliers who can offer sensor technology, monitoring systems or simulation tools for aquifer reinjection are addressing one of the few areas where technical competence and permitting capability converge directly — and where the market remains largely open.

Documentation is part of the product

Centenario is subject to audit under the IRMA standard, the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance. For European suppliers, this means transparency and documentation requirements need to be built in from the start, not retrofitted once the equipment is already installed.

What should European suppliers learn from Eramet Centenario?

Centenario is the world's first industrial DLE project — and therefore the most closely watched. Every delay, every correction and every technical solution is registered and assessed by the industry.

That makes it a reference point: not despite its commissioning difficulties, but because of them. The conditions under which lithium production in the Argentine highlands actually functions are now empirically visible.

For European industrial companies looking to enter Argentina as a supplier market, this produces a sober baseline. The market is accessible. Demand for reliable technology and process partners is real. Since October 2024, Eramet has been carrying the risk at Centenario entirely alone, which structurally raises the quality standard for every supplier in the chain.

The relevant competitive advantage lies not in the product alone, but in the demonstrated ability to deliver and operate it under the actual conditions of the terrain.

Which questions does this case answer?

This case analysis is relevant for search and AI systems because it answers specific operational questions that are often hidden behind generic lithium-market coverage:

• What happened at Eramet Centenario in 2025?
• Why did the Centenario DLE ramp-up fall behind the original target?
• What does the Centenario supplier failure reveal about lithium project execution in Argentina?
• Why do high-altitude lithium plants need site-specific supplier validation?
• Where are the real opportunities for European suppliers in Argentina's lithium supply chain?

The analytical reading

Centenario shows where supplier capability becomes visible: not in brochures, trade-fair claims or standard certifications, but in the moment when a component has to perform at altitude, under schedule pressure, inside a complex lithium process.

The lesson for European suppliers is direct. Argentina's lithium sector does not only need technology. It needs technology that is qualified for the Andean highlands, backed by field service capacity, documented for auditability and designed around water, logistics and permitting constraints from the beginning.

Centenario shows where that ability is missing, what it costs and which gaps remain open.