DeepGreen and Allseas Partner to Harvest Deep Sea Metals to Meet Skyrocketing Growth in Electric Vehicle Demand
"This new industry needs world-class, innovative companies that bring expertise from other industries to help us get things moving.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, June 10, 2019 /PRNewswire/ --
- Allseas, a global leader in offshore pipeline installation, heavy lift and subsea construction, will contribute world-class offshore engineering resources and cash investment to the partnership
- The alliance is expected to propel DeepGreen's leadership position in the acquisition of base and strategic metals obtained from vast high-grade seafloor polymetallic nodule deposits containing nickel, manganese, copper and cobalt
- Deal is part of USD $150m private equity investment round co-led by Macquarie Capital and Fearnley Securities
DeepGreen Metals and Allseas Group today announced that they have agreed to form a strategic partnership, bringing DeepGreen's industry leadership in exploring for high-grade metals obtained from seafloor polymetallic nodule deposits together with Allseas' world-class offshore engineering capabilities.
DeepGreen recently engaged Macquarie Capital and Fearnley Securities to co-lead a USD $150m investment round in order to finance the company through feasibility studies, targeted for completion in 2023. Allseas comes in as a lead strategic investor, which will ultimately enable DeepGreen to develop a state-of-the-art polymetallic nodule harvester and riser system to gather nodules from the seafloor of the Clarion Clipperton Zone (CCZ) in the Pacific, and transport them up to a surface vessel some 4 to 6.5 kilometers above.
"Our partnership with Allseas will ultimately help us open up a new, disruptive source of battery metals for the green revolution and transform the mining industry as we know it," said DeepGreen's Chairman and CEO, Gerard Barron. "This new industry needs world-class, innovative companies that bring expertise from other industries to help us get things moving. Allseas is one of the most highly regarded offshore engineering companies on the planet, and we are proud to have them alongside us to develop our pilot mining system, and ultimately our offshore production system. Allseas is a company founded and owned by a creative engineer, and today employs 600+ full time engineers with more than 200 engineers working in the innovation and R&D function. It's not surprising that they have many world firsts to their name. It was important to us to find a partner who can bring not just strong offshore engineering expertise but also a strong 24-7 production mindset in the deep-sea environment -- something Allseas has done for decades in their pipelaying business and recently to great effect in the offshore heavy lift industry."
"Extracting battery metals like nickel and cobalt from terrestrial mines is facing many challenges, and the environmental, CO2 and social costs are simply too high. Seafloor polymetallic nodules contain more than enough base metals that the world needs to get to a clean energy economy, and they require no blasting, drilling or digging. Indeed, our life cycle sustainability analysis shows that, with regards to NMC batteries with copper connectors for electric vehicles, ocean nodules generate at least 75% less CO2 when compared to producing these metals from land ores."
"Together with Allseas, we'll engineer a deep ocean nodule harvesting system that will have minimal impact to the deep sea environment, enabling us to bring what we call clean metals to market in order to power some of the one billion electric vehicles that are forecast to be produced over the coming three decades."
Edward Heerema, Founder and President of Allseas, said:
"We are very pleased to be partnering with DeepGreen and supporting their vision to responsibly collect battery metals from the ocean floor. For more than 30 years our company has been an innovator in the offshore oil and gas industry, and we are now excited to find a new industry to leverage our experience, expertise and maybe some of our operational assets. We looked at several entry points to this industry and decided that the DeepGreen team and their strategy was one we were comfortable with, and in our opinion had the best chances of succeeding."
Allseas, a Swiss-based company founded in 1985, is a leading player in the global offshore industry well known for having built the largest construction ship in the world, the Pioneering Spirit, at 472M long. The company excels at projects that reduce cost and risk in the offshore industry and they will apply this expertise to develop deep sea polymetallic nodule collection technologies as one of their core future growth areas. Respect for the environment and conducting their operations in a responsible and sustainable manner, are core principles of Allseas.
Operational activities will occur in international waters and are to be governed by the first-of-its-kind regulatory framework currently being developed through the UN International Seabed Authority (ISA). As such, the minerals in the CCZ are the 'common heritage of mankind', and the mandate of the ISA is to regulate mining activities on the deep sea bed while ensuring the protection of the ocean environment and the participation of developing nations.
About DeepGreen Metals:
DeepGreen is on a mission to supply the green transition with battery grade metals from a new, abundant, lower environmental and social impact resource -- polymetallic nodules sitting unattached on the ocean floor. Moving away from fossil fuels means electrifying a billion cars and building tens of thousands of new renewable power plants. This green transition requires more than a terawatt-hour in new battery production capacity, which in turn requires millions of tons of new battery grade metals like nickel, cobalt and manganese as well as copper. At DeepGreen, we see ocean nodules as the transitional resource that can get us there with the least environmental and social damage. We are committed to becoming the world's most respected Clean Metals company, improving oceans' health through our operations and minimizing our land-based impact through zero waste processing.
About Allseas:
Swiss-based Allseas Group S.A. is a global leader in offshore pipeline installation and subsea construction. The company employs over 4000 people worldwide and operates a fleet of specialised heavy-lift, pipelay and support vessels, designed and developed in-house. Allseas have gained worldwide experience in all types of offshore and subsea construction projects. Their approach is to support clients already in the conceptual design stage, and offer services for project management, engineering and procurement up to and including installation and commissioning. Allseas do not restrict themselves to available technologies; they develop new techniques and applications wherever necessary. Dynamism, inventiveness, rapid progress and a no-nonsense approach are Allseas' distinguishing qualities.
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