Sweden’s state-owned mining company LKAB has said it has discovered Europe’s largest deposit of rare earth metals north of the Arctic Circle. The discovery bolsters the continent’s ambition to rely less on imported raw materials needed for the green transition.
The deposit, dubbed Per Geijer, is located in the Kiruna area of northern Sweden, in the province of Lapland, and contains more than 1mn tonnes of rare earth oxides — the largest known deposit of its kind in Europe, the company said.
Speaking at the company’s existing iron ore mine in Kiruna — itself the largest in the EU — chief executive Jan Moström said it would take several more years to establish what the deposit contained. “We have ongoing exploration activities in this deposit, which means for us it’s open, it’s not closed — we don’t actually know how big it is,” he added in a press conference.