Community

Two key benefits of the project are tax revenues and employment opportunities.

Taxes: We estimate that the project with generate over €2 billion in income taxes alone over its lifetime.

Employment: Each stage of the project will create new jobs. For example, the mining operation itself will need around 90 employees ranging from mining engineers, surveyors and geologists to truck drivers, mechanics and electricians. The chemical processing facility will also be a significant job creator, and we expect the overall project to create about 400 jobs in total.

The starting date for construction is dependent on financing and permitting. We are targeting to begin construction during 2027. Once started, the build is expected to take about two years.

Dependent on permitting and financing, we are currently targeting 2029 for the start of production.

A key advantage of underground mining is that it’s much less disruptive than open-pit mining.

Mining will take place underground, which will significantly limit the impact on local communities. To further limit noise and dust, the first phase of crushing will take place underground, which will help to reduce disruption.

The leaching process, in which the lithium is dissolved in the leach liquor, is essentially carried out with water. Lithium hydroxide is a salt formed by the crystallisation of this leach.

There will be two main types of waste: quartz sand and waste from the processing stage.

Quartz sand. In the initial processing stage, we crush the rock into sand before it goes into a magnetic separator that extracts the high-grade material. The leftover material is a type of sand equivalent to a building aggregate already being mined nearby for use in various construction industries.

Leach residue. The leaching stage produces a lithium-rich solution, which is the starting product for the extraction of lithium hydroxide. This final processing stage produces lithium hydroxide and other commercially valuable by-products. This lithium-rich solution must then be purified to produce non-toxic dry by-products. We are currently evaluating commercial opportunities for these by-products. Alternatively, as a non-toxic material, it can be used to fill the voids in the mine.

The rock we are mining is mainly granite, which is non-toxic by nature.

The waste in the form of leach residue are also non-toxic. We test our process with samples from the mine from start to finish. No toxic contamination has been detected, particularly arsenic, cadmium and lead, which are common in other mining processes.

The Zinnwald Lithium mine will be a 30+ year project, so waste storage planning is crucial. We are currently exploring several options that could help minimise the impact on the surrounding area. In the meantime, here are some ways we’ve identified to reduce our footprint:

1. Less waste to begin with: Our process is designed to minimise waste and produce as many useful by-products as possible.
2. Recycling: waste in the form of quartz sand will be moved off site and sold to the construction industry to the extent possible.
3. Putting waste back where it came from: we plan to use the so-called “Avoca” method which fills the excavated areas back up with waste material as we go. We estimate that up to 90% of the mined-out void can be backfilled like this. In addition to being an efficient form of storage, backfilling also improves the structural integrity of the rock.
4. Above-ground storage of waste materials: The above-ground storage area for waste materials is continuously greened and landscaped.

We are trying to minimise the impact of the project on road traffic by using underground transport.

Underground ore transport: When the ore is extracted from the mine, the distance between the mine and the processing plant is covered underground. It is at this stage that the largest quantities of material need to be transported.