26 November
2024
Beowulf Mining Plc
("Beowulf")
Business Finland Commits Additional
Grant Funding of €232,000
Beowulf (AIM: BEM; Spotlight: BEO), and its
wholly owned Finnish subsidiary Grafintec Oy ("Grafintec") or
("Company"), is pleased to announce that the Company has been
granted €232,000 by Business Finland. The grant funding
of €232,000 is equivalent to 50 per cent of the
3-year €464,000 budget for Grafintec's 'Management and Valorisation of Waste Streams in the Coated
Spherical Graphite Production Process' project.
The proposed work undertaken by Grafintec is
part of the
BATCircle3.0 (Finland-based Circular Ecosystem of Battery
Metals) consortium led by Aalto University, with funding of €13.4
million for the next three years, and is a key project in Business
Finland's Hydrogen & Batteries - Dual Helix of Decarbonisation
programme. This BATCircle3.0 funding follows the grant received by
Grafintec of €530,000 under the BATCircle2.0 programme which was
completed in October (announcement dated
31 October 2024).
The aim of the project is to:
·
Investigate opportunities for utilisation and valorisation of
wastewater and other waste streams from the Graphite Anode
Materials Plant ("GAMP") production process;
·
Carry out a Life Cycle Analysis ("LCA") & Technical and
Economic Analysis ("TEA") of the process; and
·
Investigate the viability of the process.
This project is a continuation of the
BATCircle2.0 'Spheronisation and Purification of Natural Graphite
for the European Lithium-Ion Battery Market' project. While the
main focus of BATCircle2.0 was on developing a sustainable
spheronisation and purification technology, this project aims to
advance our understanding of the waste streams identified in the
process and how we can reduce these waste streams to minimise the
environmental impact, valorise them to reduce operational
expenditure as well as increasing the revenue of the project from
valorising waste streams.
The work undertaken in BATCircle2.0 already
demonstrated that reagents such as sodium hydroxide can be
effectively recovered from the wastewater and recycled back into
the process to produce battery-grade graphite
(>99.95 per cent purity). The previous work also demonstrated
that calcium carbonate, which is needed for the neutralisation of
the acidic wastewater stream, was produced in the process, thereby
reducing the need for fresh calcium carbonate. The BATCircle3.0
project aims to optimise the waste management processes
demonstrated and developed in BATCircle2.0 to further
improve the robustness of the business model
towards a zero-waste industrial plant.
Rasmus Blomqvist, Managing Director of Grafintec,
commented:
"Business Finland continue to provide Grafintec with excellent
support. These funds will be a valuable contribution to our
ambition to develop GAMP into a leading sustainable European value
chain for anode materials."
Enquiries:
Beowulf Mining plc
Ed Bowie, Chief Executive
Officer
ed.bowie@beowulfmining.com
SP
Angel
(Nominated Adviser & Joint
Broker)
Ewan Leggat / Stuart Gledhill / Adam
Cowl
Tel: +44 (0) 20 3470 0470
Alternative Resource Capital
(Joint Broker)
Alex
Wood
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7186 9004
BlytheRay
Tim Blythe / Megan Ray
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7138 3204
Cautionary Statement
Statements and assumptions made in
this document with respect to the Company's current plans,
estimates, strategies and beliefs, and other statements that are
not historical facts, are forward-looking statements about the
future performance of Beowulf. Forward-looking statements include,
but are not limited to, those using words such as "may", "might",
"seeks", "expects", "anticipates", "estimates", "believes",
"projects", "plans", strategy", "forecast" and similar expressions.
These statements reflect management's expectations and assumptions
in light of currently available information. They are subject to a
number of risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to ,
(i) changes in the economic, regulatory and political environments
in the countries where Beowulf operates; (ii) changes relating to
the geological information available in respect of the various
projects undertaken; (iii) Beowulf's continued ability to secure
enough financing to carry on its operations as a going concern;
(iv) the success of its potential joint ventures and alliances, if
any; (v) metal prices, particularly as regards iron ore. In the
light of the many risks and uncertainties surrounding any mineral
project at an early stage of its development, the actual results
could differ materially from those presented and forecast in this
document. Beowulf assumes no unconditional obligation to
immediately update any such statements and/or forecast.