Almonty Industries Inc. (ASX: AII) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Korean Mine Rehabilitation and Resource Corporation (KOMIR) and Hannae For T, Ltd.
The aim of the MoU is to strengthen Almonty’s South Korean domestic supply chain through the joint promotion of recycling of rare metals (such as Tungsten and Molybdenum) using scrap resources and tungsten concentrates to downstream to nano Tungsten Oxide and other essential products for Korean domestic consumption in the semiconductor and battery sectors.
Security of supply by global leading economies of strategic and rare metals such as tungsten has been a theme that has grown in importance over recent years,” Almonty President and CEO, Lewis Black, said.
“More than 83% of the supply of tungsten is produced by China. Once our flagship Sangdong Tungsten Mine is in production from late 2022/early 2023, it will be the largest tungsten mine outside of China.
“Given South Korea is the largest per capita user of tungsten globally, it is no surprise that KOMIR, the Korean Government Agency responsible for national resource security, and other global leading companies, such as Hannae are keen to work with Almonty.
“We see this as an important further collaboration with the South Korean government who are already providing significant economic and tax incentives for Almonty Korea Tungsten in its construction of the Sangdong Mine.”
KOMIR is the Korean Government Agency responsible for national resource security, including developing overseas mining and processing capacity to supply the Korean market. One of KOMIR’s strategic objectives is to upgrade the country’s access to critical minerals.
Hannae is one of the global leaders in rare metal recycling, who has developed proprietary technology to extract metals such as Tungsten, Vanadium, and Titanium with the from wasted SCR catalysts.
The parties have agreed to jointly, in good faith, investigate and undertake a feasibility study on the ‘public-private joint rare metal recycling project’. The MOU will remain in effect for two years and can be extended by agreement between the ‘parties’ before the expiration. The agreement can be terminated by notifying the other party.
