There's a new multi-billion-dollar investment coming to the United States from Asia. The company is called Korea Zinc, but its products are a bit more complicated.
Zinc may not cross your mind very much. It's an element and a nutrient that shows up in a lot of multivitamins.
On the industrial side, zinc is mostly used to prevent steel from rusting.
Combine a little bit of zinc and a bigger amount of copper, and you get brass.
Zinc is extracted from ore, heating it to an extremely high temperature in a facility called a smelter.
So far, that's all pretty old-school industrial stuff — but it's not why the world's largest refiner of zinc is building a $7.4 billion facility in Tennessee. And it's certainly not why the Pentagon is taking a 40% ownership stake in that operation.
Korea Zinc is buying a former smelter site to churn out zinc, lead, copper, and tons of critical minerals.
It's that last part that has led to such a keen interest from the United States government, which is trying to diversify its sourcing chain for critical materials whose supplies are dominated by China.
Products like antimony, which is used in semiconductors, and germanium that's used in fiber optics. Also cadmium, used in rechargeable batteries.
All will be part of the output of Korea Zinc's new plant, with construction planned for 2027.
