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Arkansas prepares for lithium boom with second statewide summit

TBP

Roby Brock: Welcome to this edition of the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal Report. I’m your host, Roby Brock.

Today, we’ll talk about lithium — which Arkansas could be on the cusp of a lithium boom. It could benefit all parts of the state, but particularly South Arkansas. Today, I’ll sit down with Hugh McDonald, who’s Arkansas Secretary of Commerce, and Cheryl Edwards from Southern Arkansas University, who leads some workforce efforts in the lithium industry down in that region of the state. That’s today on the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal Report.

Arkansas is on the verge of a lithium boom, and an upcoming summit will be the second one that the state of Arkansas has held. I caught up with Hugh McDonald, Arkansas Secretary of Commerce, and Cheryl Edwards with Lithium Learns to learn more about the upcoming summit.

Come to you first. We’ll talk about lithium first before we get into some broader economic development conversation here. You guys have a big summit coming up at the end of October — I believe October 28 and 29 here in Little Rock. What’s going to happen at the Arkansas Lithium Summit?

Hugh McDonald: Yeah, well, it’s our second summit. The last one was in February of 2024. We are going to — this is bigger, better, packed agenda. We’ve got people and companies from all over the world coming here. I think our attendance is going to exceed last year’s. But it’s really focusing on bringing all these people together in Arkansas, where we’re trying to bring notice to the industry. And we have a huge opportunity with the largest North American lithium resource right here in South Arkansas.

Roby Brock: What would be an outcome from this summit that you would say, this did more than I expected it to do? What would be exceeding your expectation for this summit?

Hugh McDonald: Well, this is, of course, for the long game. We’re dealing with effectively building a brand-new industry on top of the process industries that already exist in South Arkansas. But it’s building relationships, having companies come here that don’t know anything about Arkansas, having them understand about the business environment — the pro-business environment — in Arkansas.

The governor is going to be there as well. She’s fully, fully engaged in this process. So, you know, the outcome is, of course, building — helping really the nation build out the entire supply chain in the lithium supply chain, of which the midstream and upstream portions of that supply chain are very much lacking in the United States. And that’s where we can play a much more significant role.

Roby Brock: All right. Cheryl, you’re from Magnolia, and you’re in the heart of where the lithium boom, as we like to say, is starting to roll. Tell everybody a little bit about what you do in terms of workforce development and where Lithium Learns kind of fits into the piece of the puzzle there.

Cheryl Edwards: Sure, thank you. The state of Arkansas invested millions of dollars into workforce development and education through HIRE grants — Higher Industry Readiness through Educational Development. SAU wrote a grant specifically geared on one of the target areas, which was lithium extraction and battery technology.

SAU, along with the Venture Center and Apprentice.ly, are working to help develop a talent pipeline for the nascent lithium industry and for the existing chemical industry that we have in Southwest Arkansas. So we are starting at K-12 and infusing STEM education with a mobile STEM lab that’s going to hit the ground and run with infusing concurrent career and technical education in school districts that currently are not served with career and technical education — doing programs such as chemical process technology and construction technology.

We launched a pilot program with Magnolia High School and South Arkansas College, and SAU this fall plans to roll that out across Southwest Arkansas next fall. And then doing adult education when the plants get closer to production time, so that we can build that workforce and give all of these industry partners who have been driving this program with us and walking hand in hand with us since the beginning, giving them some homegrown talent.

Roby Brock: Yeah. You mentioned earlier it’s a long game. Speak to that a little bit in terms of this might not be something that we see an overnight change in the economy in South Arkansas. This is going to be a slow-growing process.

Hugh McDonald: Yeah, I mean, there are companies that have already committed to make billions of dollars of investments. Of course, the market price of lithium — it’s a globally traded mineral.

Roby Brock: Where is it? You look at it daily?

Hugh McDonald: No, I do not. It’s $8,000 to $10,000 right now, I think, but it’s fallen. So all investments, kind of like the oil and gas industry, depending on what that market price depends on, will drive cycles of investment. But again, it’s the long game. These are companies that are deciding to make billion-dollar investments. And it’s not going to happen overnight, but we’re trying to set the groundwork to enable it. You’ve got to pave the way.

Roby Brock: What do you think are the expectations, Cheryl, for folks in the region down there? I mean, you live there, you talk to people. There’s obviously hope, there’s obviously optimism, but is there kind of some reality to that? They understand this isn’t going to happen tomorrow — it’s something that we have to build for.

Cheryl Edwards: Absolutely. We’ve gone from, “Will this happen?” to, “This is going to happen,” to, “What do we need to do to get ready for this to happen?” So there are groups all over town and all over Southwest Arkansas who are working on different initiatives to make sure that we are ready.

And you don’t know what you don’t know, right? Until it happens. But we are looking at housing. We’re looking at infrastructure. We’re looking at the water supply. And this could not be happening without the investment that the state of Arkansas is making to bring this opportunity to Southwest Arkansas.

Roby Brock: What jobs are there now — the graduates that you’re going to be cranking out, what will they be doing? What’s the existing workforce opportunity for them?

Cheryl Edwards: So right now we have two companies that produce bromine from the Smackover Formation in Southwest Arkansas. Students who graduate between now and when the first lithium plant goes fully commercially operable can take jobs there. They can further an education at one of our two- or four-year institutions, like Southern Arkansas University or College of Science and Engineering, or they can take an apprenticeship with one of those existing companies that are there.

So there are a lot of different opportunities. One of the things that our industry partners have told us is they really are interested in homegrown talent. And we are really interested in finding and presenting opportunities that keep our local students home.

Roby Brock: All right, let’s look at the bigger economic development talk here. You could probably tell me how many projects have been announced in the last 12 months.

Hugh McDonald: Nineteen.

Roby Brock: Nineteen. All right. The biggest one, I would say, is the $4 billion Google investment in West Memphis. What brought Google to Arkansas?

Hugh McDonald: Well, I think it is mainly power. They negotiated a power contract with Entergy, so it’s cost of power and availability. Power is key. Land — of course, we have lots of land. So power and infrastructure are really the big drivers for data centers.

That’s Arkansas Secretary of Commerce Hugh McDonald and Cheryl Edwards from SAU, talking about the upcoming lithium summit in Arkansas. You can learn more at our website at businessjournal.com.

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