The European Union on Wednesday announced 13 new raw material projects outside the bloc to increase its supplies of metals and minerals essential for it to stay competitive in the energy transition as well as defence and aerospace.
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“We must reduce our dependencies on all countries, particularly on a number of countries like China (…) The export bans [recently imposed by China] increase our will to diversify,” European Commissioner for industry Stephane Sejourne told reporters.
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The EU list is part of the implementation of the Critical Raw Material Act agreed in 2023 under which the bloc aims to mine 10%, process 40% and recycle 25% of its needs by 2030.
en of the new projects will be focused on materials essential for electric vehicle batteries and battery storage, including lithium, cobalt, manganese and graphite. Two projects for rare earths are located in Malawi and South Africa.
Other projects are located in Britain, Canada, Greenland, Kazakhstan, Madagascar, Norway, Serbia, Ukraine, Zambia, Brazil and the French territory of New Caledonia.
The British project is to extract tungsten and the ones in Ukraine and Greenland will be for graphite, with the project in Greenland run by GreenRoc Strategic Materials. Tungsten is key for the defence industry.
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The new list brings the EU’s total number of strategic projects to 60. In March, the Commission announced 47 projects within the EU.