A year in review

Exciting times ahead

As we approach the end of this year, I want to thank each one of you for being part of this family.

I appreciate your great work, commitment and dedication, which have been integral to Eurobattery Minerals progress and success. Before we now soon move in to 2020  I’d like to take a few minutes of your time and summarize 2019; the year we stopped being Orezone and became Eurobattery Minerals, the year we moved from Spotlight Stock Market to Nordic Growth Market and the share price (BAT) has increased by more than 200 percent since beginning of July until now. This is also the year I came in as the CEO of Eurobattery Minerals.

Looking at the macro perspective this year consumers and companies across the globe have risen and taken measures for a more sustainable future, and even politicians in some part of the world with the recent statement from the EU commission on carbon dioxide neutrality by 2050 as one example.

The interest of the electric vehicle sector is increasing

Looking specifically at our sweet spot, the EV-industry, we can see that the already strong growth and interest in the sector has increased even more in 2019. The car manufactures are all presenting new EV-models and several battery projects have been announced across Europe. However, still Europe only cater for 2-4 percent of the total batteries needed in the booming European EV-industry and even if there are some initiatives in traceability and ethics, battery minerals are unfortunately still mined without focus on sustainability and not seldom with terrible working conditions and child labor. 

As the foundation of the battery value chain, we have given ourselves a goal and that is to work for more sustainable battery minerals by providing ethical and fully traceable battery minerals from Europe. Given the booming EV-market, the global focus on sustainability and the under developed battery minerals mining sector, this is one of the most interesting and fastest growing markets in the world at the moment. With 25 years’ experience from the mining industry, I am really happy to have your mandate to lead Eurobattery Minerals in this development.

With this in mind, let me just remind you of what key milestones we have achieved this year in our projects in Spain and Sweden.

Successful drilling operation in Castriz

In Galicia in northern Spain we have our flagship nickel, cobalt and copper project Corcel with Castriz as the primary prospect area. We are following our time plan and during the autumn we have presented the results from our geochemical and geophysical program that indicated higher amount of nickel and cobalt in the ground than historical soil sampling. This has been further investigated by the drilling campaign and the initial assay results from two out of four drilling holes confirm high level of nickel. In the beginning of 2020 we will get the final results from the two remaining holes and with this in hand we will be able to give a new update on Corcel, a project that also include prospect areas in Monte Mayor and Monte Castello.

In the northern parts of Sweden, we have a total of 7 explorations permits and similar to our Spanish project, the minerals in focus are  nickel, cobalt and copper and also rare earth elements (REE). All have recently been further investigated by geologists, new samples have been taken for petrographic and chemical analysis and previously found and analyzed boulders and outcrops have been investigated further. The material will now be evaluated and the results will form the basis for next year’s exploration work.

Valuable collaborations

In addition, we have started a collaboration with Uppsala University and the AGH University of Science & Technology in Krakow, with efforts to find new ways to recover rare earth elements (REE) from apatite without the risk of getting unwanted residuals. Our REE deposit in Fetsjön in Västerbotten in Sweden will be used for field studies. Speaking about collaborations, we have alsojoined the European Battery Alliance, an initiative founded by the European Commission with the purpose to ensure that all Europeans benefit from safer traffic, cleaner vehicles and more sustainable technological solutions. Today Eurobattery Minerals is one of more than 250 members working to build a strong and competitive battery market.

As announced earlier this week, I am very happy to once again say welcome to our new chairman Monia Benbouzid. Her experiences will be instrumental in the continuous development of Eurobattery Minerals. 

Finally, I am looking forward to your continuous support in 2020 that will bring a lot of exciting developments but before that I wish you all a merry Christmas and a very happy new year, filled with success, happiness and good health.

Roberto García Martínez
CEO
Eurobattery Minerals AB