ANGLO American said on Monday it had concluded a business agreement with Finland to “support the country’s battery metals strategy”.
It said a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed with Finnish Minerals Group which manages the government’s mining investments. “We look forward to working with Finnish Minerals Group … to explore the wealth of opportunities that our agreement could offer,” said head of projects at Anglo, Alison Atkinson.
Anglo is developing the Sakatti project in Finland’s Lapland region. Finland recently approved the project’s environmental assessment study which has potential to produce copper/cobalt, nickel as well as platinum group metals.
“Finnish Minerals Group is advancing several greenfield investments further downstream in the battery value chain,” said Anglo.
FMG is a 20% shareholder in the €588m Keliber Lithium project which is being developed by controlling shareholder, Sibanye-Stillwater. The project is scoped to supply about 15,000 tons a year of lithium hydroxide which is used in the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles.
The South African mining group’s CEO Neal Froneman has said Finland is strategically important because the country is positioning itself to be a raw and semi-finished battery metals supplier to Europe.
Finland also has an abundance of hydropower which means its metals stand a better chance of commanding a market premium.
