While Europe is one of the world’s largest lithium importers, it has failed to establish a lithium industry of its own. Infinity Lithium is looking to change this.
Through its subsidiary Extremadura New Energies, Infinity Lithium owns the second-largest hard-rock lithium resources in the European Union (EU).
The 75-per-cent-owned San José project in the Extremadura region of Spain hosts a resource of 111.3 million tonnes (indicated and inferred) for 1.6 million tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE). This is based on a 1000 parts per million (ppm) lithium cut-off.
Infinity Lithium aims to use feedstock from the San José project to fuel a fully-integrated downstream lithium chemical conversion plant. This would produce a battery-grade lithium product for battery plants across the EU and beyond.
The company recently achieved a major environmental win with the Extremadura Government reinforcing the advancement of the San José permitting process. This enables the finalisation of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) scoping document which Infinity lodged last year.
“What we’ve got now is an opportunity to streamline our permitting process as we move forward to incorporate those comments in our final mining license and environmental submissions,” Infinity Lithium chief executive officer and managing director Ryan Parkin said at last week’s RIU Sydney Resources Round-up.
Parkin said Infinity Lithium has been working closely with local and regional government over an extended period of time to achieve a streamlined permitting pathway.
The company was also granted a key San José exploration permit at the end of March, known as the Exploration Permit Extremadura S.E (PESE).
As the Extremadura region looks to increase its support of lithium projects, the Extremadura Government last year established a ‘lithium decree law’ that recognises lithium mining and processing to be of public interest.
The EU also announced its European Critical Raw Materials Act in March, which aims to support local critical minerals mining and processing operations get off the ground. This is to ensure resilience of supply chains and mitigate supply risks.
Parkin said there are plenty of reasons why a project such as San José should be brought into production.
“At a European level, there are vast quantities of battery-grade lithium chemicals that are going to be needed to fuel this revolution as we move forward,” Parkin said.
“So San José is ideally positioned now to capitalise on that and really accelerate through the permitting process and deliver this project for Europe.”
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