The society of Cáceres needs to know that the lithium mine is not what they have been told»

The new head of Infinity Lithium in Extremadura, Ramón Jiménez, believes that the changes in the project will transform public and political opinion about the exploitation of Valdeflores

CLAUDIO MATTHEW

Caceres

Saturday, April 16, 2022, 1:07 p.m.

With 17 years of experience as a senior executive of important Spanish companies such as Acciona or ACS, Ramón Jiménez Serrano arrived in Cáceres a month ago to take charge of Extremadura New Energies, the new company that Infinity Lithium has created to manage the project on the ground of the Valdeflores lithium mine.

–Why do you continue to believe that you can overcome the rejection that the mine in Cáceres arouses? Is it possible to carry out a project that is opposed by most of the city ?

–We believe from the surveys we did that the majority of society is not against it. I was not against the old project, and even so, what we have done is collect the complaints and needs of Cáceres society and capture them in a new project, which is absolutely different. It is no longer an open pit extraction. The surface of the valley will not be touched at all and it will be the same now as it will be in 20 years. An underground extraction is going to be carried out and the only thing that is going to be seen is an entrance to the extraction zone, more or less the same size as the Miravete de Madrid-Cáceres tunnel. In addition, it will be outside the valley, in an area far from Cáceres and will be accessed through a tunnel to the site. There will be no noise, no dust, no environmental or visual affectation.

–But even so, the aquifers would be affected and there would be air pollution derived from the transformation process into lithium hydroxide.

–The Calerizo aquifer is not affected because it is in a different geological fold. If we imagine a Bimbo bread, each slice is a different fold. We will do the extraction in one of the slices and the aquifer is in a different one, so that we will never touch it. In terms of emissions, our process is the most innovative worldwide. What we do is heat the material with some innocuous additives, which we then wash in water and that water is reused in the same process, so that nothing is dumped anywhere. We are going to take the water from the Cáceres wastewater treatment plant, a very small part, around 10% of the total wastewater already treated, which instead of being discharged into the river would be channeled to the plant.

-There is talk that the process involves a large consumption of water.

–It is a closed circuit in which only the water that evaporates is consumed, so that consumption is minimal and no water from any spring or aquifer reserve is touched. Nor will there be rafts like in Aznalcóllar because everything is recycled. Then, the filters we use prevent harmful emissions into the atmosphere. All this is what we want to explain to the ecologists, and we are waiting for them to respond to the request to meet with them that we have made.

-At the moment all these developments do not appear officially anywhere, and for that reason the mayor of Cáceres himself has questioned whether there is any new project.

-I have read it. When I explain all this to people, they listen to me and are surprised because they see that it is not what they have been told the mine was going to be, but of course, they have to give us that opportunity because the society of Cáceres needs to know that the project is not It is what they have told you. We have registered since April 4 a request for a meeting with the mayor. What happens is that until the judicial resolution that is pending is issued [ the company appealed to the courts the denial of the research permitby the Board] we cannot officially register anything, the law does not allow us to do so. We do have the project prepared so that, as soon as the resolution comes out, we can launch it and start immediately. Before officially presenting it, we want to collect all the inputs from Cáceres society, including those from the mayor with what he thinks the city is going to demand of us, to incorporate it, even in details such as where he thinks it would be better to locate the access tunnel to the site. .

–Do you think you will convince the mayor if you meet with him?

-Well, I think people understand each other by talking. I see no reason for you not to sit down, at least, to listen to us. The project is totally new and the company [Extremadura New Energies] too, is one hundred percent from Cáceres and is going to pay its taxes here, which we estimate to be around 2,400 million euros during the entire time of operation, half for the central government and the other half for Extremadura.

–An old marketing strategy is to change the name of a product when it is very discredited. Is that what Infinity Lithium has done by creating Extremadura New Energies?

-Really not, because the name has not been changed, but the whole project, radically and from top to bottom. The furnace of the processing plant is no longer fed with gas but with green hydrogen, the energy that is consumed will come from renewable sources and all the extraction machinery will be electric, without combustion engines. It is not a question of marketing or a facelift. The company is completely from Extremadura, and in fact the possibility of listing it on the Spanish stock market is being considered.

–How is the judicial process going on the research permit?

-We hope that around the summer the resolution will be able to come out.

-Even winning it and getting all the permits from the Board, there will always be the Cáceres urban planning plan, which prohibits extractive activity in Valdeflores and there is not the slightest political will to change it. How do you plan to save that stumbling block?

–But the fact is that the old project was absolutely different and with the new one there is no affectation whatsoever to the Mountain, nor to the valley, nor visual, nor noise... I want to tell you, Mayor, and the City Council will have to decide whether to grant that change of land rating. We have attended and will continue to attend to everything that the society of Cáceres asks for, but I believe that before deciding whether or not to change their opinion, they must have all the information.

–Infinity Lithium is accused of being a purely speculative company that only wants to keep the mine project alive to play with the rise and fall of shares. In fact, its only activity as a company is the San José Valdeflórez project.

-Someone who speculates does not spend as much money as this company has spent in developing the project and meeting the requirements of Cáceres society. The true added value of this project is the transformation process. When lithium leaves the deposit, it is paid at 1,000 dollars per ton, but if you process it and sell it processed, it is paid at 17,000. This explains why there is a planned investment of 600 million euros with 700 jobs.

-Before there were many fewer millions and 190 jobs. This dance of figures gives an unserious image and can make one think that they are invented.

–The explanation is the change of the project to underground and the non-polluting plant. Much more investment and more skilled jobs are needed.

– Is it a problem for you that the processing of the Lithium Iberia mine in Cañaveral has an advantage?

-The European Union has said it very clearly. There is not enough lithium either in Europe or globally. The Cañaveral mine is not a problem. We trust our project and we know that the deposit has the resources that we say it has, and that it can be done and has to be done. The factories are going to need lithium, so it has to be extracted and processed, and of course there won't be any leftovers.