We were delighted to be joined at the @LondonSouthEast May webinar on 24.05.22 by Robin Brundle, Chairman at Technology Minerals (TM1). He reminded us that the company floated on AIM as #TM1 in November last year, raising 6M during that pre and floatation process.
Technology Minerals are building a position in the battery metals sector, at both ends of the cycle. The business consists of two divisions, exploring for battery metals at 6 licences around the world, and building two battery recycling plants in England, one for lead batteries in Tipton, Yorkshire, the other for Lithium Ion in Wolverhampton. Both have just received key Environmental Agency approvals, although not quite all of them. Tipton is staffed and ready to start producing once the final licences have been received.
"The lead asset side is a pretty standard recycling plant, with perhaps 12 of these plants around the world. It's about switching it on and ramping up productivity utilisation as quickly as is practical to do so once we get the green light, which could be as soon as tomorrow."
"Wolverhampton is a little different as we are using a dry crushing process and we have an IP licence on the plant and the process itself. We shred the batteries without causing fire or explosion and it enables us to then extract the liquid electrolyte, and then extract the dry black mass which we can shred, separate the plastics from the battery metals. We can handle any type of Lithium-Ion battery - phone, cars, trains and our machine and process will handle it seamlessly" explained Robin.
TM1 owns 49% of the Recyclus Group and has provided seed capital for what will be industrial scale battery recycling.
TechMin are working on technology transfer with Warwick University, who are forecasting that by 2030, Lithium Ion battery recycling as we are doing it will meet around 22% of the market requirements. "The other 78% will have to be extracted on a cleaner greener basis, so both parts of our business need to work hand in hand".
"Our approach as a junior miner is to find mid-tier partners for each of our mining assets in various continents and to move them up the value chain. We are in solid discussions on all our assets and have just sold a 10% stake in our Idaho cobalt-copper prospects."
Tech Minerals (TM1)