FinnCobalt Oy has informed Eurobattery Minerals AB that it has joined BATTRACE, a Finnish research project focusing on traceability and sustainable processing of battery metals. Eurobattery Minerals has the option to acquire 100% of FinnCobalt Oy in a staged acquisition.
“Identification of the geographical origin of battery minerals, and the ability to track this along the value chain – from mine to battery cell – will create a competitive edge for future battery manufacturing. Joining this project will help our acquisition target FinnCobalt Oy and the Hautalampi mine project to participate in and monitor developments in this important area,” said Roberto García Martínez, CEO of Eurobattery Minerals.
FinnCobalt’s role in the project will be the delivery of nickel-cobalt concentrate material from the Hautalampi mine development project for further traceability studies. FinnCobalt has obtained this battery metals concentrate from its earlier extensive process development testing work, which was conducted by GTK Mintec and Outotec Oyj metallurgical laboratories, Finland.
The three-year BATTRACE project (sustainable processing and traceability of battery metals, minerals, and materials), run by research partners VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and Geological Survey of Finland (GTK), focuses on the traceability of battery metals, minerals and materials, and the optimisation of production processes. The project involves several industry partners, of which FinnCobalt Oy is one.
The traceability of raw materials is becoming increasingly important as the raw materials produced by the mining industry are required to come from well-known and responsibly operated sources. At present, it is not clear to what extent different analytical methods could be used to verify the origin of the metals used in the production of batteries. Verification of the origin of metals is important in the sustainable production of batteries. Each ore deposit has its own fingerprint based on its mineralogical and geochemical composition. The BATTRACE project identifies this fingerprint and investigates its preservation along the value chain. Improving the sustainability of battery production also requires optimised production processes that recover metals from ores and process them into raw materials for responsible battery producers.
Source: globalminingreview.com
