"List: Scramble for Swedish metals
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Maria Sunér, CEO of the industry organization Svemin, Helena Kjellson, Chief Mining Inspector at the Mining Inspectorate of Sweden.
Last year, the Swedish Mining Inspectorate of Sweden received a record number of applications for mining of the metals and minerals that the EU considers critical for the green transition. This is shown by TN's review. At the same time, the unpredictable permit processes are a problem for more mines to be started.
Right now, mining prospectors from all over the world are turning their attention to the Swedish bedrock. In 2022, the Mining Inspectorate of Sweden (a special decision-making body within the Swedish Geological Survey) received a record-low 104 exploration permits, but just one year later, in 2023, the number had bounced back to 242.
TN has taken a closer look at all exploration permits and can conclude that a large part of the increase is related to the critical and strategically important minerals and metals that the EU has earmarked for the green transition.
If you look at the total number of exploration permits for these metals and minerals that the Mining Inspectorate has approved, it appears that about 60 percent were submitted last year, TN's review shows.
These include metals and minerals such as dysprosium, lanthanum, scandium, graphite, yttrium and lithium (see full list below) that are necessary to build the battery parks, solar panels and permanent magnets for electric cars that are now rapidly increasing in demand.
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Applications to investigate the Swedish bedrock continue to trickle in at a high rate, says Helena Kjellson, Chief Mining Inspector at the Mining Inspectorate of Sweden.
Helena Kjellson is a newly appointed Chief Mining Inspector at the Mining Inspectorate of Sweden, which is the authority that handles the permits. She says that applications to investigate the Swedish bedrock for these critical metals and minerals have continued to come in at a high pace in 2024.
"I would say that this large increase is due to the increasing attention and the actual need for these minerals and metals. Then, of course, the EU's Critical Raw Material Act (CRMA), which has put its finger on this need and clearly stated that it wants to increase the degree of self-sufficiency in these materials, has also played a role.
With CRMA, the EU aims to break China's dominance in this area and compete with the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to attract green investments.
Maria Sunér, CEO of the industry organization Svemin, welcomes the development after several years of decline for the Swedish mining industry.
"Sweden is one of the countries in Europe that has the most interesting bedrock for these critical and strategic minerals and metals. There is a particularly good supply of rare earth metals," says Maria Sunér.
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Maria Sunér, CEO of the industry organization Svemin, believes that the unpredictable permit processes continue to create uncertainty, but that the EU's Critical Raw Material Act can change that.
Today, there are only 12 active mines in Sweden, despite the fact that there has been great interest in opening new ones. The biggest obstacle is the long and unpredictable permit processes, which can often take several years," says Maria Sunér.
A new approach is required if Sweden is to continue to be an attractive mining country.
"These processes have created a great deal of uncertainty for prospectors and investors. This is clearly a contributing factor to Sweden's decline as a mining nation in recent years.
Maria Sunér also has her hopes pinned on CRMA.
"The law sets a time limit of a maximum of 27 months for an actor to receive a yes or no to an application. A "one stop shop" will also be established, which means that companies have an entry point into the process to work towards. Hopefully, this will facilitate the often extensive work of applying for a permit.
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The deposit in Norr Kärr contains a number of heavy rare earth elements that are essential in batteries and wind turbines, according to Eric Krafft, CEO of the Canadian mining company Leading Edge Materials.
Eric Krafft is CEO of the Canadian mining company Leading Edge Materials, which for 15 years has been developing a project against a permit to start a mine in Norra Kärr north of Gränna.
"There is a large and known deposit of heavy rare earth elements that are absolutely necessary to manufacture permanent magnets that are used in electric car batteries and in wind turbines, for example," says Eric Krafft.
The company's plans have met with stiff resistance from environmental organizations, but Eric Krafft says that the resistance has eased since the project was redesigned in 2021 and then, among other things, the plans for the wet chemical processes were changed.
"We have moved all the process steps to a more suitable location. This has removed the threat that metals could possibly be leached from tailings ponds that could end up in Lake Vättern.
Now he hopes that the knot that has delayed the project for so long can be about to be solved.
"A major problem has been that the authorities want to receive a Natura 2000 application before the exploitation concession and the environmental permit have been granted. It is an impractical arrangement. Now we have received signals from the government that this arrangement may be about to be abolished, which would mean a great deal for our continued work.
Another example of a project where the permit process has taken a long time is the mining and materials company Talga's ambition to start a graphite mine outside Kiruna.
The deposit itself was discovered over ten years ago, but Cen Rolfsson, press officer at the Swedish Talga office, notes that the permit processes have taken a very long time as virtually all judgments are appealed.
In the spring of 2023, the Land and Environment Court finally granted Talga permission to mine 120,000 tonnes of graphite ore annually in four open-pit mines, but that judgment was appealed to the Supreme Court by two Sami communities and the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation.
"Of course, we hope that the Supreme Court rejects that appeal because the environmental impact assessment that we have already submitted has already passed through two courts," says Cen Rolfsson.
If Talga can start the process of mining graphite, the idea is to deliver it directly to the company's battery factory, which began construction in Luleå in the spring of 2023.
"If we are allowed to extract the graphite ourselves and refine it, we can reduce the climate footprint by over 90 percent compared to today's situation where Europe is dependent on imports of climate-heavy synthetic graphite from Asia," says Cen Rolfsson."
https://www.tn.se/hallbarhet/35384/lista-rusning-efter-svenska-metaller/
of late... Thanks for the entertainment!
That was the time of carnival maybe I was just too drunk to remember that someone posted it.
