Extremadura New Energies has registered with the Junta de Extremadura - through the company of the Castilla Mining group - the request for the passage to direct concession of its project of underground extraction and first transformation of lithium. In this way, and taking into account that the presence of this mineral in Valdeflórez is accredited, the process is activated for the corresponding environmental impact studies to be carried out, as contemplated by the legislation.
Once the previous administrative procedures have been completed with the maximum legal guarantees for all the parties involved in the process, the company has taken one step further in the processing of its project. From here, and according to the deadlines that the regional Administration is establishing based on the regulations in force, Extremadura New Energies will present its environmental impact study, its restoration project and its exploitation project.
In this phase, the ENE project will already incorporate both the comments raised by the different administrations at the time in the Scope Document and the technical innovations announced a few weeks ago with the new Li-Stream RPKTM process.
The objective of the company is that this same year the exploitation concession can be counted on, so that at the beginning of 2025 the works for the implementation of the project begin, which will last for about two years. According to this calendar, at the end of 2026 or the beginning of 2027 the first tons of lithium hydroxide would be produced in the first transformation plant that will be located in Cáceres.
In total, the Extremadura New Energies project will involve an initial investment of 1,430 million euros that will allow it to reach an annual production of 33,000 tons of lithium hydroxide. The direct employment that will be generated will be more than 1,500 jobs during the two years of construction and 700 during the 26 years of operation of the plant.
