XINING - Construction on a production base for lithium carbonate, a raw material for making lithium batteries, is expected to begin in March in China's lithium-rich province of Qinghai.

The project, with a designed annual output of 30,000 tons and an investment of 4.85 billion yuan ($770 million), is owned by a joint venture between China's leading new energy vehicle maker BYD, Qinghai Salt Lake Industry Group Co Ltd and a Shenzhen-based investment company.

BYD chairman Wang Chuanfu said on Saturday that BYD has mastered techniques to extract lithium from the salt lake.

A new BYD battery plant in Qinghai will start production in June. With an investment of 4 billion yuan, the plant in Xining, capital of Qinghai, is designed to have an annual production capacity of 10 GWh of lithium batteries.

Qinghai, in China's northwest, has built a complete new energy vehicle industry chain from lithium resource mining to lithium battery and new energy vehicle production.

Qairhan Salt Lake, covering more than 5,800 square kilometers in Qinghai, boasts deposits of more than 60 billion tons of various resources, such as potassium, sodium, magnesium and lithium.