LKAB, Sweden’s state-owned mining company, announced on Thursday that it had discovered deposits of more than one million tonnes of rare earth metals in the Kiruna area in the north of the country, the largest known such deposit in Europe, Reuters reported.

Rare earth metals are a group of metals essential to modern industrial processes, needed to produce components for electric vehicles, wind turbines and cutting-edge electronic devices.

“This is good news not only for KLAB, the region and the Swedish people, but also for Europe and climate change,” said Jan Mostrom, director of the Swedish state-owned company.

“[Zăcământul] it can be a significant building block in the production of critical materials absolutely necessary for the green energy transition,” he said.

The news is all the more important because Europe currently has no rare earth metals mined, meaning the region is dependent on imports from other parts of the world, especially China, which holds the vast majority of the world’s reserves.

Europe depends on imports of rare earth elements

Greenland, an autonomous region of Denmark, closed one of the world’s largest rare earth mines in November 2021 after the indigenous Inuit people spoke out for it.

The move raised new concerns after Afghanistan, another major supplier of rare-earth elements to Western industry, reverted to the Taliban just months ago.

“Electrification, independence of the EU from Russia and China will begin with [această] mines,” Swedish Energy Minister Ebba Busch said in a press release on Thursday.

But the road to producing the Swedish field could be long, as LKAB says it plans to submit an application in 2023, but it could be up to 10 to 15 years before production and supply to markets actually begin.

The European Commission considers rare earths to be one of the most important resources in the region.

On the same topic:

• The Great Battle for Control of Raw Materials / How Wheat, Gas, Nickel or Rare Earth Elements Became Geopolitical Weapons