RE: New (german) article about Zinnnwald project18 Sep 2019 16:01
The planned mining of lithium ore in the Altenberg district of Zinnwald already has a positive effect on companies in the town. One of them is the hotel "Lugsteinhof" with its 50 employees. "We have already provided accommodation for various companies that are working on the exploration route for lithium mining," said Managing Director Jochen Löbel MDR SACHSEN. Similarly, companies that participated in the tender for the promotion of lithium. "We would be very happy if the lithium mining starts again in a manageable period," said Löbel.
By 2021 at the latest, the mining of ore to start
According to current plans of the German lithium, it should be in the next year, but at the latest in the year after next so far. Test drilling had shown that not underground, as initially suspected, 96,000 tonnes, but 125,000 tonnes of metal store. According to the Altenberger Amtsblatt, Prof. Armin Müller of Deutsche Lithium in the city council announced that this amount of lithium would be enough to reduce it by about 30 years.
Electric car is driving lithium demand
In recent years, the global demand for lithium has steadily increased. The boom of electric cars, whose batteries require the raw material, plays a role here. At the end of 2018, on the MDR request, Michael Schmidt of the German Raw Materials Agency assumed that the demand for lithium would increase or even quadruple by 2025, "from around 30,000 tons to well over 100,000 tons".