Swedish mining group LKAB discovers Europe's largest deposit of rare earth metals

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(Kitco News) - Swedish state-owned mining group LKAB announced on Thursday that it has identified significant deposits of rare earth elements in the Kiruna area with mineral resources exceeding one million tonnes of rare earth oxides, which is the largest known deposit of its kind in Europe.   

"This is good news, not only for LKAB, the region and the Swedish people, but also for Europe and the climate. This is the largest known deposit of rare earth elements in our part of the world, and it could become a significant building block for producing the critical raw materials that are absolutely crucial to enable the green transition. We face a supply problem. Without mines, there can be no electric vehicles," stated Jan Moström, President and Group CEO, LKAB.

The company said that no rare earth elements are currently mined in Europe and at the same time, demand is expected to increase dramatically as a result of electrification.

"According to the European Commission's assessment, the demand for rare earth elements for electric cars and wind turbines, among others, is expected to increase more than fivefold by 2030. Today, Europe is also dependent on imports of these minerals, where China completely dominates the market, a factor which increases the vulnerability of European industry," LKAB added.

The company pointed out that existing mineral resource of the deposit would be sufficient to meet a large part of the EU's future demand for manufacturing the permanent magnets that are needed for electric motors in, among other things, electric vehicles and windpower turbines.

However, LKAB also warned that the road to possible mining of the deposit is long, where the first step is an application for an exploitation concession for the Per Geijer deposit in order to be able to investigate it further at depth and investigate the conditions for mining.

"The plan is to be able to submit an application for an exploitation concession in 2023," the company said in a statement.

LKAB has already started to prepare a drift, several kilometres long, at a depth of approximately 700 metres in the existing Kiruna mine towards the new deposit in order to be able to investigate it at depth and in detail.

"We have not seen the full extent of the deposit," the company said.