Eurobattery Minerals AB announced the purchase of a 40% stake in FinnCobalt Oy, which owns the ground and all mining rights of the Finnish Hautalampi nickel-cobalt-copper project. This is the first time Eurobattery Minerals has exercised its option to acquire 100% of the shares in FinnCobalt Oy in a staged process. The acquisition plays a significant role in the development of the company and in achieving its goal to establish a battery mineral mine followed by production and sales of critical battery minerals starting in 2023.

As announced about two years ago, Eurobattery Minerals plans to acquire 100% of the shares in FinnCobalt by 2024 at the latest. The board of directors of Eurobattery Minerals has informed the founders of FinnCobalt Oy that they will exercise the first option to the contract that became effective on 27 May 2020, so that in the next 60 days before 27 July 2022 Eurobattery Minerals would make said option effective by paying in corresponding cash: EUR 250,000 as stipulated in the contract and a subscription of EUR 1,000,000 in EBM shares to the three founders. These two actions will be taken parallelly and simultaneously.

Hautalampi is situated at the same site as the well-known Outokumpu copper mine where approximately 28.5m tons of rock with a copper content of 3.8% copper were mined from 1912-1989. The nickel-cobalt-copper orebody in Hautalampi is located parallel and above the exploited copper deposit. Existing surface and underground infrastructure, including a high voltage power line, concrete foundations, and roads, provide significant location advantages to the project.

Approximately EUR10m-15m has been invested in Hautalampi by previous owners, including 26,000 m of core drilling, a decline and additional underground mine development works (2,100 m), mineral resource and reserve estimates, multiple mineral processing studies and a feasibility study. The previous investments will enable FinnCobalt Oy and Eurobattery Minerals to push the project forward quickly.