(Reuters) – Sibanye Stillwater has secured a 500 million euros ($557.30 million) financing package to complete its Keliber lithium project in Finland, the miner said on Thursday.
The South African company owns 79.8% of Keliber after it invested in the project in 2021 to diversify away from platinum and gold production into battery metals amid a global shift towards cleaner energy.
State-owned Finnish Minerals Group and other Finnish investors own the remaining stake in the Keliber project.
Sibanye got 250 million euros from export credit guarantee agencies including Finland’s state-owned Finnvera, 150 million euros from the European Investment Bank and a syndicated tranche of 100 million euros from commercial banks.
The funding meets Keliber’s final capital expenditure requirements of about 667 million euros to complete the project, Sibanye said. About 250 million euros was previously raised through equity.
“The financing solution that has now been secured enables the construction phase to be completed and the production of battery-grade lithium hydroxide to begin,” Matti Hietanen, CEO of Finnish Minerals Group, said.
When completed, Keliber is expected to have annual production of about 15,000 metric tons of battery-grade lithium hydroxide monohydrate for at least 16 years, according to Sibanye’s website.
Sibanye CEO Neal Froneman said the funding provided by European lenders showed the project’s “strategic importance to the European clean energy transition”.
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The funding also “significantly improves the group’s liquidity, effectively ring-fencing the existing group facilities for operational requirements”, Froneman added.
On Wednesday, Sibanye said it had agreed a $101 million gold prepayment deal to raise cash to help repay loans after a slump in platinum group metal prices hurt its income.
It has also agreed to refinance its 5.5 billion rand ($306.86 million) revolving credit facility with South African banks, which was increased to 6 billion rand.
($1 = 0.8972 euros)
($1 = 17.9233 rand)
(Reporting by Nelson Banya; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)
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