Swedish miner Eurobattery Minerals has signed a non-binding letter of intent to invest €2.5 million in Spanish company Tungsten San Juan SL and obtain 51% ownership on a fully diluted basis.
TSJ is working on the development of the San Juan wolfram deposit, located in Galicia, northwestern Spain. The site has appreciable tungsten mineralization which has never been mined.
The company has planned an initial small-scale open-pit production based on proven reserves of 60,000 tonnes at 1.3% WO3 (78,000 MTU). With consideration of a potential extension of the open pit as well as the other reserves in the remaining numerous outcroppings of skarn, TSJ forecasts a mining objective for the project in the order of at least 960,000 MTU, that is, more than 12 times the size of the proven reserves.
According to the miner, San Juan has all the necessary licences and contracts in place to commence production, including a letter of intent for an off-take agreement with Wolfram Bergbau und Hütten AG, an Austrian world-leading tungsten producer within the Swedish Sandvik Group.
In a press release, Eurobattery Minerals said its full investment amount would primarily be used for designing and building a processing plant and as working capital for the production start. First tungsten delivery is expected in 2025.
“The payment would be made in cash in two tranches of €1.5 million and €1 million respectively, where the company would access its full ownership stake directly after the payment of the first tranche,” the brief states. “The company intends to complete both tranches of the investment in 2024.”
Tungsten is a critical raw material used widely in industrial applications, as well as in the electronics and power industry, and the aeronautics and defence sectors.
“This acquisition is a game changer for Eurobattery Minerals and it will transform the company’s DNA,” Roberto García Martínez, the firm’s CEO, said. “Tungsten is listed as a critical raw material by the EU and tungsten-enhanced steel is vital, for example, for the defence industry.”
Eurobattery Minerals is also the majority owner of the ground and mining rights to the Hautalampi nickel-cobalt-copper project in Finland and the Corcel nickel-copper-cobalt project in Galicia.
