Minerals Security Partnership supports specific mining, processing and recycling projects

The global Minerals Security Partnership principal meeting around London Metal Exchange Week 2023 last week discussed critical minerals investment.

The meeting was co-chaired by Nusrat Ghani, the Minister of State for Business and Trade for the United Kingdom, and Jose W. Fernandez, the US Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy and Environment.

The sessions included the 14 partners of the Minerals Security Partnership (MSP), representatives from emerging minerals economies, as well as private sector organisations. There were representatives from Australia, Brazil, Canada, the European Commission, India, Japan, Norway, Sweden, South Africa, Zambia and the UK.

The MSP aims to catalyse investments and build a diverse, secure and responsible global critical minerals supply chain.

The partners agreed to advance projects with a high potential to develop responsible critical mineral supply chains, demonstrate high environmental, social and governance standards, facilitate the global energy transition, and that are collaborating with relevant government or financial agencies of MSP partners.

There were 11 projects in upsream mining and mineral extraction, four in midstream minerals processing and two projects in recycling and recovery. One project focuses mainly on lithium, three on graphite, two on nickel, one on cobalt, one on manganese, two on copper, and seven on rare-earth elements. Five of the projects are in the America, seven in Africa, three in Europe and two in Asia-Pacific.

Notable milestones were said to be achieved at the:

• Chvaletice Manganese Project, Czechia - Canadian company Euro-manganese is reprocessing manganese in mine tailings to produce high-purity electrolytic manganese metal for batteries. Companies from MSP partner countries are developing offtake agreements.
• Queensland Pacific Metals, Australia - QPM's Townsville Energy Chemical Hub is building a nickel processing plant to diversify the midstream of the nickel supply chain, with AUD$1.4bln received in conditional debt committments and offtake agreements agreed for 100% of the nickel and cobalt sales for the project life.
• Twigg Exploration and Mining, Mozambique - The US International Development Finance Corporation has approved a loan up to US$150mln to finance investments in graphite mining and processing.
• HyProMag, UK - The University of Birmingham has developed Hydrogen Processing of Magnet Scrap to commercialise rare-earth magnet recycling and recycling at end-of-life. A large-scale recylcing plant is being developed with first production scheduled for the end of 2023 after testing at the UK's first rare-earth magnet recycling pilot plant and the UK's only facility to make sintered rare-earth magnets.