As “Handelsblatt” writes, citing information from Rock-Tech CEO Dirk Harbecke, the company surprisingly received a rejection notice from the Federal Ministry of Finance on Monday. The company expected relatively federal funding from the pot called “Resilience and Sustainability of the Battery Cell Manufacturing Ecosystem.” The funding guidelines were launched by the Ministry of Economic Affairs last year as part of the Temporary Crisis and Transitional Framework (TCTF) aid framework created by the European Commission.
Rock Tech Lithium is a German-Canadian company based in Vancouver that extracts the raw material for lithium hydroxide, often used in electric car batteries, from the Georgia Lake mining project in Ontario, Canada. This material is to be refined into battery-compatible products at Guben, among others. The company wants about 24,000 tons of battery-compatible lithium hydroxide annually according to previous information Production in Guben from 2025. By 2030, about 50 percent of raw materials should be obtained from the recycling of used batteries. Mercedes Benz has already secured an annual delivery of an average of 10,000 tonnes of lithium hydroxide from Guben.
As a lithium processing company, Rock Tech is an upstream link in the battery cell supply chain. In fact, the target group of the funding mentioned. When unveiling the funding program last year, Finance Minister Robert Habeck said investments in the battery value chain contribute to Europe’s strategic dominance. “It is disappointing that we are not receiving the funds from the TCTF programme,” CEO Harbecke told Handelsblatt. And further: There is a very constructive exchange with the Brandenburg government. “We assume that the state of Brandenburg can mobilize sufficient regional funding to implement the project.” The local community of Guben also has a “great interest” in the completion of the project.
Construction of the inverter factory in Guben has already started End of March 2023. At the time, the company said the processing plant would be commissioned in mid-2025 and produce battery-grade lithium hydroxide from 2026. It was also said that the planned total investment volume for the plant was around 650 million euros. However, Harbecke is now speaking to “Handelsblatt” about a planned investment of 800 million euros, although the rejected funding application will receive “up to 200 million euros” in federal subsidies.
Both at the ground-breaking ceremony and ahead of the funding rejection, Rock Tech emphasized that its Guben converter represented the EU’s new strategic goals of securing twelvefold lithium demand by 2030 while processing 40% of lithium regionally. The company indicates a new EU legislation to secure critical raw materials.
“Our Guben facility is the most developed lithium converter project in Europe,” Harbecke emphasized when construction began a good year ago. Now he adds: “If the EU is to achieve its goal of bringing 40 percent of the processing of critical raw materials to Europe, then Europe needs a dozen lithium converters. So far there isn’t a single one.”