Dakota Minerals' Australians try to prove that from the heart of Trás-os-Montes can come out lithium that will help the electric revolution in the automotive sector and beyond. It is from there that they want to assert themselves as a sustainable supplier for Europe.
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The samples are taken from tens of meters of depth by means of two forms of drilling: with a round drill with diamond tip (testimonies) and through reverse circulation, which sends the crushed rock to the surface.
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Paulo Zacarias Gomes April 16, 2017 at 10:00 p.m.
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While on the surface of the Roman hill is the cold early spring wind that stirs the underbrush, tens of meters deep machines and men interrupt a (relative) tranquility with 300 million years.
Underneath helmets and behind vests and masks, geologists and laborers continue the routine this morning, indifferent to the weather conditions of this day in Trás-os-Montes. Around a drill, in a matter of seconds they fill in numbered plastic bags. Then they line the dozens in the vicinity of the machinery and take out and wash samples.
This is how Dakota Minerals has developed part of its prospects in the Sepeda concession, Montalegre county, in the last months, where it tries to locate mineral occurrences that justify the exploitation of lithium in the region. In about 50 points has been the technology of "reverse circulation" to get the job done. A perforator grinds the rock by compression and the resulting material is led to the surface by filling one bag for each meter of material removed. In the intervals, small discharges of dust escape all around.
"The white powder is a good sign," it is said among the delegation visiting the prospecting zone. This lighter coloration of the rock means that the drilling has reached the pegmatite, the geological anomaly located between the region's shale mass and associated with the occurrence of rare minerals such as lithium.
More than five thousand meters of perforations have been carried out so far, the enthusiasm in the field is still more restrained than the "fever" that has been surrounding lithium in recent years. Demand for the lithium-ion battery industry - driven by the needs of automotive electrification or home energy storage - drove the price to skyrocket in international markets: between 2015 and 2016 it went from $ 7,600 (almost € 7,200 at Current) to $ 20,000 ($ 18,800) per ton.
While a mobile phone battery uses an average of five to seven grams of lithium carbonate, one that is used by a Tesla car, such as Model S, requires 63 pounds of this material - 10,000 times more.
Field evaluation
It was the recent interest in this mineral that brought to Trás-os-Montes about a dozen brokers, financial analysts and managers of private equity and asset management companies from Switzerland, Holland or United Kingdom. The progress of Dakota's work is evident on the ground, during a visit that the Business tracked. The Australian quoted have made discoveries in recent months that may contribute to make Portugal a supplier of lithium reference, material used in the construction of batteries that help design the next technological and energy revolution.
"Our goal is not to be one of the largest lithium producers in the world, but to be sustainable, stable, a 'one stop shop' in Europe," repeats in English David Frances, CEO of mining, Who row in the field, buried under a white plastic helmet.
After the company announced in February one of the largest discoveries of lithium occurrences in pegmatite in Europe - and already having invested more than one million euros in Sepeda -, it awaits in April for metallurgical studies that can prove the existence of high concentrations Of the mineral in that geological discontinuity.
Ideally, Frances argues, it would be a 15-year holding and extract one million tonnes of rock material per year, with an average concentration of 1% lithium. Of the samples that were followed for analysis, one of those in which a higher presence was detected points to a concentration of 2.57%, that is, 2.5 times higher than the mean.
In a second stage, it hopes that the present material will also justify the construction of a processing unit, which could mean a potential investment of 370 million euros. An infrastructure that could be ready by 2019, an ambitious time frame that depends on economic and metallurgical studies and the successful arrival of talks with the Government on possible tax incentives that justify the investment.
For now, the polls send back some cheering data. Geologists point to the rocky testimonies (the one-meter-long cylinders drawn from the basement), the gray areas where the highest concentrations of lithium may be. Visitors pick up the whitish cylinder, tilt it in the sunlight, and watch the veins with the help of the magnifying glass.
After Sepeda, others can follow
If successful, this could be the first extraction of metallic minerals to start activity in Portugal in several years. This, according to Bruno Pereira, opens up space for new discoveries with meaning: "Sepeda's project could be a new metal mineral mine in Portugal ... The success of this prospecting project may serve to attract more investment for the The mineral resources sector, "Sinergeo's managing partner, geology and geophysics specialist, who has been working with Dakota since its inception, told Business.
Major car or battery manufacturers - such as Tesla, Daimler, Volkswagen, BMW or Samsung - are among the potential largest users of the mineral, at a time when, according to Dakota, 90% of production is in the hands of four And the lithium supply market is expected to grow in 2025 to 535,000 metric tons per year, according to Deutsche Bank data quoted by Dakota.
And if in the past lithium was seen as a disposable product in mines that extracted tin - like the one that existed in Romano - it is now referred to as the "new gasoline." If the government's promised study of the potential of the mineral in the country confirms it, Portugal - from which 2% of the lithium consumed in Europe today - and may well be the new service station of the Old Continent.
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Your opinion 7
This is your space to comment on our article. Your opinion counts and we count on it.
Juca 6 days ago
With coca and the like, more money is earned and there is much less work. And word of mouth distribution.
Do Piçalho 6 days ago
Door 18 leads to white powder and is much closer to the places of consumption!
Eduardo.santos 6 days ago
Lithium - If the production of high-capacity batteries built with LITHIUM is to go forward, I urge governments not to allow the ore to be turned out to be turned out. Demand that everything has its origin here. It's end
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Trás-os-Montes: Australians confirm one of Europe's largest lithium reserves
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