Galp to recommend new lithium refinery site in coming weeks

Galp’s CEO, Andy Brown, said on Wednesday that the company will present a recommendation for the location of a lithium refinery “in the coming weeks”, after studies and talks with municipalities. ECO knows that at this stage there is a 50% probability of it being installed in Sines.

“It is a technical but also social study we are doing, which will come with a recommendation in the coming weeks,” Andy Brown said this Wednesday at the headquarters of the Northern Regional Coordination and Development Commission (CCDR-N), during the signing ceremony of a protocol with a view to reconverting the Matosinhos refinery (Porto district) into an innovation city.

He acknowledged that the company is “looking at several locations, talking to local authorities, looking at all the things that would make these conversion facilities a success.”

The issues at stake are “logistics, services,” and “access to gas networks,” he said, and he ruled out the possibility of the lithium refinery replacing the oil refinery in Leça da Palmeira, in Matosinhos.

On February 4, Environment Minister João Pedro Matos Fernandes said that as it was “a 100% private investment,” the location of the lithium refinery was not up to the government, although it had a preference for an area near mines.

“We will do everything we can for the refinery to be as close to the area where the mines are, certainly, but that is a choice for private entities,” he said.

(article last updated at 3h26 pm)