US company TechMet, which develops critical minerals projects worldwide, is interested in both lithium extraction in Ukraine and the production of finished products.
TechMet’s representative in Ukraine, Volodymyr Ihnashchenko, announced this at the United by Mining forum.
According to Ihnashchenko, the company is willing to consider building a lithium carbonate or lithium hydroxide plant in Ukraine. This would require amendments to the relevant provision of Ukrainian legislation. Ihnashchenko said the necessary changes had still not been adopted, even though a year had passed.
“This requires three small amendments, three words in Part 2 of Article 2 of Ukraine’s Law on Production Sharing Agreements. Unfortunately, a year has passed and those three words have not been added. So, unfortunately, we will have to conclude production sharing agreements covering only extraction and beneficiation of lithium into a 5.5% concentrate, rather than 99%. It is clear how much added value could have been created in Ukraine instead of abroad,” he added.
According to Ihnashchenko, TechMet specialises in the exploration, extraction, beneficiation, processing and distribution of critical minerals, including tin, nickel and lithium. The company is implementing three lithium projects in different countries, aiming to create as much added value as possible in the country where the minerals are extracted.
Ihnashchenko cited the company’s project in the United Kingdom, which involves lithium extraction, processing into battery-grade concentrate and hydroxide production.
He noted that processing is one of the reasons for China’s dominance in the critical minerals market. Some lithium deposits are located outside China, but China is where production capacity for high-value products is concentrated.
In Ukraine, TechMet subsidiary Dobra Lithium is associated with the development of the Dobra lithium deposit in Kirovohrad region. The company won the first competition for a production sharing agreement covering that deposit.
Ihnashchenko stressed that it was too early to determine the project’s final parameters because the deposit had not been sufficiently explored. Geological studies should establish the actual reserves and determine the future scale of lithium extraction.
“I want to emphasise that the company is interested in scaling the project as much as possible,” he said.
Earlier reports stated that the Dobra site and the Polokhivske deposit in Ukraine’s Kirovohrad region contain the country’s largest lithium ore deposits and are among the largest in Europe.
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