Mexico’s government recently announced the creation of a public company tasked with exploiting the country’s lithium resources.

With the official publication of a decree last week, Litio para Mexico — or Lithium for Mexico — came into existence. Given that Sonora is home to one of the country’s largest known deposits of the key battery ingredient, Gov. Alfonso Durazo said his government is going to play a role in the state enterprise’s development.

He also said that private companies will be able to work with Litio para Mexico “on one condition” — that they set up their industrial operations in Sonora.

As an example, he said that an electric car manufacturer that wanted to use lithium produced by the new company would need to produce those cars in Sonora.