Environment

The starting date for construction is dependent on financing and permitting. We are targeting to begin construction during 2025. Once started, the build is expected to take about two years.

Dependent on permitting and financing, we are currently targeting 2028 for the start of production.

We do not use any toxic chemicals as reagents in our processing. The leach process, which dissolves the lithium into the leach liquor that goes into the chemical processing phase, is done with water rather than acid.

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 liquid which is the starting point for chemical processing (this is the final stage that produces the lithium hydroxide other saleable chemical by-products). This “leach liquor” needs to be purified, and the residue from that process becomes a non-toxic dry waste product. We are exploring opportunities to find commercial uses for this waste stream. Alternatively, being a benign material, it can be placed underground as backfill material.

The rock we are mining is mainly granite, which is non-toxic to start with, so the waste in the form of quartz sand is benign.

The waste in the form of leach residue is also non-toxic. We have pilot tested our process from start to finish using samples from the mine site, and toxic elements—notably arsenic, cadmium and lead, which are common problems in other forms of mining—were not detected. 

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 adds structural integrity and minimises any risk of any potential subsidence.
4. Repurposing above-ground infrastructure: a nearby storage facility, previously used by the Altenberg mine, is partially empty and could potentially be used to store waste.