Swedish Company Discovers Largest Deposits of Rare Minerals in Europe

The Swedish state mining company LKAB announced on Thursday that it has discovered mineral sources containing over one million tons of rare oxidized minerals in the Kiruna area, with the largest known deposits in Europe.

Rare minerals are essential for numerous high-tech manufacturing processes and are used in electric vehicles, wind turbines, portable electronics, as well as microphones and speakers.

– This is good news, not only for LKAB, Kiruna, and the Swedish people, but also for Europe and the climate – said the company’s CEO Jan Mostrom.

According to him, these deposits could prove to be ‘an extremely important component for the production of key raw materials that are absolutely necessary for the green transition’.

Rare earth elements are currently not mined in Europe, which is why the continent is dependent on imports from other continents. In the coming years, there is expected to be a high demand for these minerals due to investments in electric vehicles and renewable energy.

The European Commission emphasizes that rare minerals are among the most important resources for Europe. The vast majority of rare minerals are mined in China, and it will be a long time before the mining of these precious rare earth metals in Sweden begins.

LKAB plans to apply for a concession for exploitation in 2023, but adds that it will take 10 to 15 years before mining and delivery to the market can commence.

Rare earth metals are a group of 15 minerals from the lanthanide series of the periodic table, although this number has been expanded to include scandium and yttrium. These are minerals that occur in low concentrations and in geological formations that make their extraction very expensive because they oxidize quickly and the process can be highly polluting.

Rare earth metals are so chemically similar that they are very difficult to separate, and additionally, some of the minerals in which they occur may contain radioactive elements such as uranium and thorium.

China alone accounts for 58 percent of the world’s supply and most of the world’s processing capacity, thanks to control over intellectual property related to the process and the ability to keep those industrial operations cheap, but also dirty.

The only other refinery outside continental China is located in Malaysia and is operated by the Australian company Lynas Resources.