On 15th December 2021 Euromines member company K+S officially announced its commitment to the EU principles for sustainable raw materials. These principles cover social, ecological, and economic aspects as well as sustainable corporate governance.

The EU has potential for developing local value chains, where the high EU standards of production would apply. Realising the European Green Deal and our vision for decarbonising the transport sector will shoot up the battery demand. It will be key to ensure that we don’t export our environmental footprint to third countries and preserve our strategic autonomy in critical supply chains. There are many opportunities within the EU itself to advance these on goals. One of them is the Talga project in Sweden. Talga Group Ltd officially announced it will implement the European Union’s Principles for Sustainable Raw Materials as part of its Vittangi natural graphite mining and anode production project in northern Sweden. The announcement was made alongside European Commission representatives during a virtual event ‘Green anodes: Making Europe a leader in low carbon batteries’ today.

Euromines member LKAB has partnered with SSAB and Vattenfall to create HYBRIT, a joint venture company that is now the first in the world that produces fossil-free steel. In July 2021, SSAB Oxelösund rolled the first steel produced with LKAB iron ore using HYBRIT technology, i.e., reduced by 100% fossil-free hydrogen instead of coal and coke, with good results. The steel is now being delivered to the first customer, the Volvo Group. The trial delivery is an important step on the way to a completely fossil-free value chain for iron and steelmaking and a milestone in the HYBRIT partnership between SSAB, LKAB and Vattenfall.

We are pleased to announce the NEW publication of 3D Briefcase project “The Briefcase book of daily use minerals”. Euromines is one of the project partners and also the contributor to this new book. This publication is one of the products of the 3D Briefcase project and a teaching tool at the same time. It is intended to be used for teaching geoscience disciplines in schools as well as informing the public about the importance of mining and minerals in our daily lives.