The Minerals Security Partnership (MSP), a collection of like-minded partners that includes The United States, Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the European Union met ahead of the London Metal Exchange (LME) Week 2023 in London, England. The MSP held the principal’s meeting to discuss investment in critical minerals with the global financial community.

MSP partners were joined by members of the finance community, including the Church of England Pension Fund, Standard Chartered, and ICMM.

In a statement, the U.S. Department of States said the goal of the MSP is to catalyze public and private sector investments to build diverse, secure, and responsible global critical minerals supply chains.

“Building upon the MSP’s commitment to high environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards in the global minerals sector, as expressed in the Principles for Responsible Critical Minerals Supply Chains, the MSP has published a public statement co-signed with private sector financiers which confirms the parties’ intention to deepen collaboration to drive responsible investment in critical minerals projects. Governments, project developers, and investors all have an important role to play in de-risking and financing critical minerals projects that increase global production while promoting supply chain diversification, protecting the environment, and uplifting local communities,” The U.S. Department of State wrote.

At the meeting, the MSP partners confirmed they are working to advance a number of projects that have a high potential to contribute to the development of responsible critical mineral supply chains, demonstrate high ESG standards, facilitate the global energy transition, and are collaborating with relevant governmental or financial agencies of MSP partners.

Projects include 11 projects in upstream mining and mineral extraction, four projects in midstream minerals processing, and two projects in recycling and recovery. Of these, one project will focus primarily on lithium; three on graphite; two on nickel; one on cobalt; one on manganese; two on copper and seven on rare earth elements. Five of the projects are in the Americas, seven in Africa, three in Europe and two are in Asia-Pacific.

Notable milestones were achieved for the following projects:

Chvaletice Manganese Project: This project supports the shift to a circular economy and contributes to site remediation efforts by delivering responsibly-produced manganese for the EV industry through the re-processing of manganese in mine tailings in Czechia.

Queensland Pacific Metals (QPM): QPM’s Townsville Energy Chemical Hub (TECH) project will build nickel processing capacity in northern Australia, diversifying the midstream of the supply chain for nickel, an essential mineral for electric vehicle batteries. QPM has received approximately AUD 1.4 billion (US$ 900 million) in conditional debt commitments from financing agencies in Australia, Canada and Germany.

Twigg Exploration and Mining: The Board of Directors of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) approved a loan of up to US$150 million in financing to Twigg Exploration and Mining to fund investments in the company’s graphite mining and processing operation in Balama, Mozambique.

HyProMag: HyProMag is commercializing rare earth magnet recycling using Hydrogen Processing of Magnet Scrap (HPMS) technology, developed at the University of Birmingham, UK, which can liberate and recycle magnets from end-of-life scrap.

Photo: Twigg Exploration and Mining graphite operation in Mozambique