On February 9 Sojitz announced a plan to build up a plant to produce hydrogen fluoride (HF) in Kita -Kyushu City in collaboration with Mexichem Fluor and Mexichem Fluor Japan under the multinational Orbia Group.

As a stepping stone the three companies concluded a location agreement with Kitakyushu Municipality of Fukuoka Prefecture aiming to construct an HF plant in the Hibikinada Coastal Industrial Complex of the city.

HF is a starting material for the fluorinated compounds which are used in various industries. It is indispensable as material for etching gases in the semiconductor industry and also is utilized as a raw material for refrigerating gases as well as the material of lithium-ion battery. This material is one of the three export-control chemicals implemented by the Japanese government against Korea in July 2019.

Fluorinated compounds are anticipated to become more and more important for not only semiconductor and next generation batteries but also for the medical and telecommunication requirements. The demand for HF is presumed to expand accordingly from now on. However, they say that Japan at present imports most HF of domestic demand from a designated source.

According to the plan of the three companies, fluorite is imported from the Mexican fluorspar mine possessed by Mexichem Fluor. Using the raw material in Japan, Sojitz will start the HF producing/marketing business and plan to establish a full-scale supply system domestically.
Mexichem Fluor Japan will take advantage of the home-made HF to produce refrigerants.
The plant to be constructed in Kita Kyushu City is planned to be completed within 2025, so that the sales of HF may start from 2026. According to Sojitz’s Public Relations Div., the planned scale of HF business will be somewhere between 40,000 and 50,000 tons.

For reference, the business project has been adopted as the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry’s “Subsidies for Promoting Domestic Investments to Reinforce Supply Chains (the 3rd round)”.