Newsletter August 2022

Dear reader,

I hope you had a wonderful summertime and you were able to relax a little, enjoy the sun, sea and beach with your families or on your own, gathering enough energy for the last part of the year. We at Eurobattery Minerals took a little holiday break as well, but we were not idle: Naturally the hunt for battery minerals, for cooperation partners and for new mining projects never stops.

Another step closer to mining

The greatest summer heat seems have passed, at least in Central Europe. Let us therefore turn our eyes to Spain, or more precisely: to our project in Corcel. For the upcoming mining work there we have submitted the necessary documents to the Energy & Mining Service of La Coruna, Spain, to complete the Environmental Impact Statement and the Operating Permit. The North Spanish Mine will be instrumental in delivering responsibly mined raw material needed for a clean transition of the automotive and energy industry. Due to their scarcity and as a result of the increased demand in recent years, these are resources declared strategic by the European Union. At Eurobattery Minerals, we are committed to responding to European policymakers and businesses with battery minerals mined in Europe.

Germans support more battery mineral mining in Europe

Electromobility is the trend of our time. We at Eurobattery wanted to know what the end customer, i.e. the car buyer, thinks about the procurement of critical minerals, especially from countries like Congo, Chile, China or Russia. Usually, topics like decent working conditions, environmental protection or the prohibition of child labor do not play a major role in these places. The representative survey in Germany was conducted by the analysis institute YouGov and the results show that sustainability is the top priority for most people considering the purchase of an electric car/hybrid. 69 percent of respondents consider sustainability “very important” to “important” when buying an electric or hybrid car. 47 percent are considering buying an electric/hybrid car as their next vehicle. Fair working conditions along the supply chain are very important to important for 59 percent. To us, these are very encouraging results! The survey should give politicians and decision makers food for thought. You can find the results here.

The dark side of the green transition

Why are we at Eurobattery Minerals doing what we do? Why do we expose ourselves to long official processes, fight on a political level for streamlined licensing procedures in e.g. Germany and try to raise people's awareness for responsible mining in Europe?

The answer is simple: Illegal mining endangers human lives. To get to the bottom of this problem, international NGO Global Witness spent six months investigating the outsourcing of the industry to the Chinese region of Myanmar. The result: „There, heavy rare earth mining has exploded so quickly that within just a few years a mountainous corner of Myanmar, known as Kachin Special Region 1, has become the world's largest source of supply. This region is a semi-autonomous territory run by militias that are affiliated to Myanmar's brutal military regime. The mining is illegal under Myanmar's laws, and hardly exists on paper.” Human rights abuses, poisoned water and a militarization of the tradition-rich area should force companies to reconsider their logistic strategy. The demand for critical raw materials will triple in the coming years until 2035. For ethical and moral reasons, we can no longer afford to be dependent on China.

We are on track

I also used the summer holidays to visit our important projects in Finland and Spain. Things are going very well there, we are on schedule. We have already drilled many kilometers down and exploration is slowly coming to an end at our Hautalampi project and we are optimistic that we will be able to start the next steps with the production planning.