Anglo American’s Sakatti copper and polymetallic mission in Finland has been designated as a ‘Strategic Challenge’ by the European Fee below the European Union’s (EU) Essential Uncooked Supplies Act (CRMA).
Underneath the CRMA, Strategic Initiatives are thought-about to be within the public curiosity as a result of their significance in making certain safety of provide of strategic uncooked supplies within the EU, thereby benefiting from extra environment friendly processing of allowing purposes and subsequently extra predictable growth timelines, Anglo American explains.
Alison Atkinson, Anglo American’s Initiatives & Improvement Director, mentioned: “We’re delighted to be awarded Strategic Challenge standing for Sakatti – an vital milestone for this distinctive mineral deposit with a excessive focus of future-enabling metals, together with a major product of copper, very a lot aligned with Finland’s and the EU’s important uncooked supplies priorities.
“The EU presently produces about 4% of the important minerals it wants and has a said ambition to extend this to 10%. With Sakatti anticipated to ship round 100,000 tonnes of copper-equivalent metallic manufacturing per 12 months from the early 2030s, we count on to play a major position in serving to to construct Europe’s capability and safe the accountable provide of the metals and minerals required for decarbonising our vitality and transport techniques, quite a few superior applied sciences, and assembly the fast-growing calls for of tons of of hundreds of thousands of individuals of their on a regular basis lives.”
Anglo American says it has a variety of well-sequenced brownfield and greenfield prospects for a pathway to greater than 1 Mt of annual copper manufacturing, which incorporates the greenfield Sakatti mission. Final 12 months marked 20 years of Anglo American in Finland, having begun mineral exploration exercise in 2004 and found the Sakatti deposit in 2009.
Situated in Finnish Lapland, 15 km north of Sodankylä, the corporate is making use of its blueprint for accountable mining to design and develop Sakatti as one among our subsequent era of FutureSmart mines – a extremely automated, low-carbon underground operation with minimal floor footprint.
Again in October 2023, Atkinson mentioned Sakatti was being designed as the subsequent era of FutureSmart Mining, constructing on what it has discovered from Quellaveco and Woodsmith, significantly in the case of making certain there’s minimal floor footprint and “utilizing expertise and improvements to ship even higher sustainability outcomes”. She added: “Sakatti is about to be a remotely operated, low carbon-underground mine with an electrical mining fleet utilizing expertise and mining strategies that can create zero waste and allow excessive levels of water recycling, contributing to a sustainable provide of important minerals.”
