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With This New Production of Lithium Batteries, Sigma Could Become a Zero-Waste Miner
The miner Sigma Lithium, located in the Jequitinhonha Valley, announced this week that it will triple its lithium production for electric batteries in 2024, producing approximately 768 thousand tons, as the miner has already secured the total of US$ 155 million necessary to finance the expansion.
Sigma Lithium, which operates in the Jequitinhonha Valley and is also listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, could put its first commercial product on the market in April next year and expects to produce 270 thousand tons in 2023.
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With this new development from the miner, Sigma could become one of the four largest lithium battery producers in the world by 2025, estimates Canadian brokerage Canaccord Genuity, a mining specialist.
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Sigma would only trail three others: American Albemarle, Chilean SQM, and Chinese Ganfeng Lithium. With the giant production, the company’s analysts raised the target price for the miner’s shares from US$ 45 to US$ 65 and also removed the buy recommendation.
Miner That Produces Lithium Batteries and Is Waste-Free
According to Ana Cabral-Gardner, CEO of Sigma: “We will be able to scale our production without compromising the strict sustainability standards: no use of polluting chemicals in the purification process, with dry stacking and with recirculation of water that we capture and treat from the Jequitinhonha river.”
In the face of a market that was already heating up, the energy crisis that arose from the war in Ukraine became a temporary license for reversing environmental criteria in mining the necessary inputs for the energy transition, she says.
Currently, Sigma is preparing to become a zero-waste miner, given its heated demand for ores for batteries. Cabral states that the company has received offers to sell its waste, containing lithium scraps, as well as quartz and feldspar, for US$ 1,200 to US$ 1,400 per ton.
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