Europe, Raw materials are present in the ground all over the world but some are more common in certain areas than others

These minerals and metals are used in many technologies, from smartphones to wind turbines and electric car batteries.

And as countries around the world are setting out to reduce carbon emissions, the demand for clean technologies is increasing, and with it so is the demand for raw materials.

K.C. Michaels is a legal advisor and critical minerals expert at the Internation Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organisation analysing data on the energy sector worldwide.

“Essentially all of the clean energy technologies that we need to decarbonise the energy system require large amounts of minerals and metals,” he explains.

Electric vehicle (EV) batteries for instance need large amounts of lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite. While rare earth elements are mainly used in permanent magnets for EV motors and wind turbines.

The European Union has established a list of 30 critical raw materials, mostly minerals, that are considered strategic to the EU’s economy and that have high supply risk.

But where do we get them from?

“The first challenge is the availability of those critical raw materials,” explains Dario Liguti, the director of sustainable energy at the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe.

“The production of some of those materials is highly concentrated in certain countries today,” he adds.

More than three-quarters of the global production of critical raw materials used for energy comes from just three countries.

China leads with 66% of the global supply share, followed by South Africa with 9% and the Democratic Republic of Congo with 5%.

And in some cases, a single country can be responsible for over half of the global output.

“For example, cobalt supply from the Democratic Republic of Congo is about 60 or 70% of the world production,” Liguti explains.

China also plays a huge role in refining, a necessary step before the materials can be used.

So for example, even though cobalt is primarily mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, almost all of it goes to China for processing.

This concentration of resources can lead to major issues in supply, particularly for places like Europe, which produces very little in-house.

“If we imagine a world where there are ten suppliers of lithium and one of those suppliers has a strike or some sort of issue and a shutdown, there are a lot of opportunities to switch to other suppliers.

But if we imagine a world where there are only two suppliers and there’s a disruption from one, then there’s a really big impact,” Michaels says.

“Their demand is already right now explosive and it will only become so as the transition towards a less carbonised energy system becomes even more important,” Liguti says.

The International Energy Agency projects that if the world stays on track to meet its global climate goals and reach net zero by 2050, the overall demand for minerals is going to quadruple by 2030.

“This is a huge increase in just the next seven or eight years,” Michaels says.

“When we start to look at specific minerals, then the demand increase can be much higher. Specifically for lithium, it’s as many as 40 times, depending on the scenario,” he adds.

So can the current supply keep up with growing demands?

“There is a real risk that we won’t be able to ramp up production fast enough to meet these goals,” Michaels says.

“Even if we could have 100% re-use of all the minerals and metals that are out there today, we’re still not even close,” he adds.

According to Liguti, increasing production won’t be enough. “The quantities necessary for the green transition are staggering,” he says.

“The answer to that demand is not only through increased primary production, but it is as well through the increase of the recycling and the reuse of those raw materials, on establishing the circular economy, the traceability of those minerals, so we exactly know at which stage of the value chain those raw materials are,” he explains.

Securing the supply is not the only issue at stake. Mining can have a destructive impact not only on the environment but also on local communities.

“While we develop lithium mines and cobalt mines and manganese mines, even if the scale of operations is smaller, we don’t want to do the same errors that we did when we started exploiting oil and gas, ” Liguti says.

So we have to consider what happens to mines at the end of their lifecycle, he adds.

This means looking at “what to do with the mine, how to involve the local communities, how to account for negative externalities on the environment and mitigate those aspects”, he explains.

So how can we ensure a sustainable and ethical supply chain of raw materials?

One of the solutions, experts say, is supply chain diligence.

“Companies will be required to look into their suppliers and really try to understand where the materials are coming from, what the risks are and what they can do as purchasers to reduce those risks,” Michaels explains.

This principle will be used in the new EU battery regulations, to ensure that batteries on the European market are sustainable and circular throughout their whole lifecycle, from the sourcing of materials to their collection, recycling and repurposing.

“It can lead to real efforts to improve the situation because once the downstream companies, the purchasing companies and the car manufacturers become engaged, then they can bring about a lot of change.

They can speak to their suppliers, they can push for new standards and push for improvement,” Michaels adds.

Innovation can also play a big role in reducing the demand on raw materials.

New technologies can help improve how we use and mine these materials but also find alternative sources, develop substitutes and improve recycling.

“A raw material might not be critical a few decades from now as they were not critical a few years ago,” Liguti says.

“But they are critical now and we need to take care of that. So in 20 years, we don’t have to look back and say: “Oh, we did the same errors that we did 100 years ago when we started exploiting oil and gas”,” he adds.

To address this, the EU will adopt a Critical Raw Materials act on the 14th of March, 2023. The initiative aims to make sure Europe has a diverse and reliable supply of materials, and ensure social and environmental standards are respected, Euronews writes.

Euro Manganese got to next permitting stage for its Czech project

Based on feedback from the Czech Ministry, Euro Manganese can now start the next stages of the permitting process of the Chvaletice manganese project. Euro Manganese says the Czech Ministry of Environment has completed a six-month screening of the company’s preliminary environmental impact assessment for the project. The project is intended to recycle waste from a decommissioned mine in Czech Republic to produce ultrahigh-purity manganese products, particularly for electric vehicle batteries. The company considered the screening procedure important for remaining on the right side of regulation and generating stakeholder input, which will inform the final design and planning phases of the Chvaletice project.

Input on the assessment was received from various government bodies, public agencies and regional and local authorities, as well as community members, since it was open to the public. The stakeholders’ main concerns have been around the management of increased vehicle traffic and noise, impacts to air and water quality, and the preservation of sight lines to a nearby historic site. CEO Marco Romero is confident that the company can address these concerns in forthcoming detailed plans.

“Following more than four years of environmental baseline and impact studies, process design and engineering, we purposely provided much more detailed information to the public and regulators about our project than is normally required at this stage of the permitting process. In the end we were provided with useful feedback.”

Euro Manganese targets publishing a definitive feasibility study on the project by the end of the year, while work on the final environmental impact assessment will start mid-year, also targeting completion by the end of the year. Meanwhile, Romero says procurement and fabrication of the project’s demonstration plant remains on schedule, with delivery to site expected in July. The demonstration plant will provide high purity manganese materials for supply chain qualification by the company’s potential customers.

Source: miningweekly.com

Euro Manganese to develop a high-purity manganese production facility in Czech Republic

Euro Manganese is looking to develop a high-purity manganese production facility to reprocess tailings material from historic mining operations at Chvaletice that ran from the early 1900s through to 1975. As Euro Manganese advances feasibility studies at its wholly owned Chvaletice manganese project about 90 km east of Prague in the Czech Republic, it has also been lining up potential customers for planned output from its demonstration plant, which is projected to come online in late 2020.

So far, the company has queued up five prospective customers for about 55% of the planned demonstration plant capacity, and management hopes these early-stage customers will ultimately become long-term buyers from full-scale production down the road.

Since first looking at the project in 2015, Euro Manganese has undertaken studies on the size of the resource and its extraction potential (running a pilot-scale test operation). In early 2019, the company announced the results of a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) for the project that showed an after-tax net present value of US$593 million using a 10% discount rate.

The PEA models a project operating life of 25 years producing 1.2 million tonnes of high-purity electrolytic manganese metal (HPEMM), of which two-thirds is expected to be converted into high-purity manganese sulphate monohydrate (HPMSM) powder.

The study forecast US$404 million in pre-production capital, US$24.8 million in sustaining capital, and US$31 million in working capital, with a post-tax internal rate of return of 22.6% and a 4.9-year payback. The project’s economics were based on an average HPEMM (containing 99.9% manganese) price of US$4,617 per tonne and HPMSM (containing 32% manganese) price of US$2,666 per tonne over the life of the operation.

“The pilot plant tests were a resounding success,” Marco Romero, Euro Manganese’s president and CEO, said in an interview. “We produced high-purity manganese products of a quality that has not been seen before by the market — the highest-purity products in the world right now.”

The project hosts measured and indicated resources of 27 million tonnes grading 7.3% total manganese (5.9% soluble manganese), with 98% of the resource tonnes in the measured category.

The resource is contained in three above-ground tailings cells from past operations, with indications that the manganese is homogeneously distributed throughout the tails. About 80% of the manganese occurs in carbonate form as rhodochrosite and kutnohorite, which is beneficial as it is readily leachable in the extraction process and requires no calcination, unlike manganese oxide ore.

“The vast majority of our target market is very much the lithium-ion battery industry, and there are also other customers that need very high-purity inputs for specialty steel products, such as hydrogen storage tanks, and for hybrid vehicle anodes, and also for ferrite permanent magnets used in electric vehicles,” Romero said.

Often referred to as the forgotten battery metal, the outlook for high-quality manganese looks robust. Benchmark Minerals Intelligence, which specializes in battery material research, recently forecast demand growth for high-purity manganese will jump from 80,000 tonnes in 2020 to 370,000 tonnes in 2025, a more than 360% increase. Benchmark Minerals’ growth projections are just for the EV/cathode battery sector and do not incorporate demand from other sectors such as motor fabrication, anodes and specialty steels, aerospace aluminum-magnesium alloys, or beverage can stock.

Although it can be a significant component in lithium-ion batteries, manganese itself does not make up a big cost constituent. “Depending on the cathode chemistry it can be anywhere between 10% to a third of the cathode mass, but because it is a lower value product it can be as low as 1-2% of the cost of the battery,” Romero explained.

Given its location in the Czech Republic, a member of the European Union, the company has a natural target market throughout the continent. “We stand to become the only primary producer of high-purity manganese products in Europe,” Romero said. “There is no other deposit [in Europe] even remotely close to this scale and quality.”

Euro Manganese says it is working on setting up a supply chain qualification process with several customers.

“We’re currently in the middle of a feasibility study, which we expect to complete by year end, and we’re months away from filing our project notification that is the start of the environmental assessment process for the full-stage project,” he said.

Approximately 95% of global high-purity manganese product is produced in China, where several projects have been built recently or are under construction.

Euro Manganese has tapped into that Chinese expertise in the sector and established strategic relationships with three firms.

CINF, the engineering arm of Aluminum Corp. of China (Chinalco), undertook a prefeasibility study on Chvaletice that ultimately turned into the company’s PEA.

The company is also partnered with Changsha Research Institute for Mining and Metallurgy (CRIMM), a research arm of China Minmetals, on all its lab and test work, including pilot plant construction. CRIMM has also been awarded the contract for the building, delivery and commissioning of the Chvaletice demonstration plant for a fixed price of US$2.5 million.

Euro Manganese recently appointed BGRIMM Technology Group (BGRIMM), a division of Beijing General Research Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, as lead process plant engineer for the Chvaletice feasibility study, which commenced in October 2019.

Data from the BGRIMM-led feasibility study has started to trickle out with recently reported magnetic separation test results of about 85% total manganese recovery and a 15% total manganese concentrate grade, supporting the proposed process flow sheet for the operation. Additionally, deep purification confirmation tests also verified previous test findings, with the successful removal of target product impurities.

Capital and one-year operating costs needed to complete Euro Manganese’s demonstration plant are expected to reach about US$5 million. The company’s latest financials indicate a current funding gap, showing just over $2 million in the treasury.

Romero reports that the company is evaluating several near-term funding options. In addition, the company says it anticipates entering into offtake agreement negotiations with its high-purity manganese customers to support project financing for the commercial development of the project.

Euro Manganese is covered by two mining analysts. Anoop Prihar, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus Canada (previously GMP Securities), has a speculative buy rating on the company with a target price of $1.00 per share, while Canaccord Genuity mining analyst Larry Hill has a target price of A$1.10 on the stock.

At press time in Toronto, Euro Manganese traded at 12¢ per share, near the lower range of its 9.5¢ to 28¢ one-year trading range, giving the company a market capitalization of $21 million.

Source: northernminer.com