South Africa-based investment holding company Novare Holdings has announced a partnership with US-based Reelement Technologies to establish Africa’s first critical and rare earth element refining facility.
These plants will deploy Reelement Technologies’ proprietary refining platform to produce high-purity lithium carbonate, rare earth oxides and other critical minerals through environmentally sustainable processes. This production volume is aimed at meeting growing demand in the battery and defense industries in both Africa and North America.
The first phase of the agreement, signed in early February, will see three facilities built near the mine, with the first facility in South Africa’s Gauteng province. Following this, the development of another plant in Zambia or Angola is planned to take advantage of the Lobito trade corridor, and a third plant could possibly be built in Lagos, Nigeria, to take advantage of the country’s lithium deposits.
ReElement Technologies’ platform is modular, allowing existing buildings to be reused to construct the plant. In addition to minerals, this refining technology can also use waste materials such as old batteries, magnets, and mobile phones as raw materials.
ReElement Technologies aims to begin development of the refinery facility by the second half of 2025. The US company provides chromatographic separation and purification platform technology along with project management expertise.
Novare Holdings will provide the necessary capital investment and operational management with initial capital of $100 million. The partnership will provide initial funding to launch the project under an established entity based in Africa.
“Together with Novare, we will bring innovative refining technology to the region, enabling countries to increase and capture the value of their natural resources and drive the continent’s industrial and economic development,” said Ben Kincaid, CEO of Africa at Reelement Technologies.
“…Novare will lead the way forward, modeling how African countries can and must function as key stakeholders in global supply chains for critical minerals.”
ReElement Technologies says its platform is designed to refine large quantities of rare earths and critical battery elements. The predictive model design enables the same processing technology to be used for natural ores and recycled post-consumer materials, enabling the platform to recover rare earth elements and critical battery metals at remanufacturable purity.
The platform can be connected to existing processing sites to meet partners’ refining needs and can be scaled according to required volume specifications. The reduced space required means the entire platform can be transported in large shipping containers and transported directly to the project site for local decentralized refining.
According to the United Nations Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Africa has significant reserves of the world’s key energy transition minerals, holding 55% of the world’s cobalt reserves, 47.7% manganese, 21.6% natural graphite, 5.9% copper, 5.6% nickel, 1% lithium and 0.6% iron ore.
Source: UNCTAD
“Africa is very rich in minerals,” Derrick Roper, managing director of Novare Holdings, said in an interview with CNBC Africa News Agency in mid-February. “Historically, however, many minerals have been exported to other parts of the world where they are refined and value added to the minerals.
“It’s great news that ReElement is very keen to partner with us and actually bring that technology to the African continent. This will allow us to do the refining and beneficiation in Africa.”
Top photo: ReElement Technologies (Source: ReElement Technologies)
