It is a good month since we came back from the Bothnian Bay. Only now have I had time to catch my breath and reflect a little on the successful expedition, our third since we started.
There were twelve of us on board the vessel in total: a captain, a first mate, three deckhands, a cook, three colleagues from us at Scandinavian Ocean Minerals and three people from our partner Sweco. That we finished ahead of schedule despite periods of hard weather, carried out more tests than planned and kept to budget is the result of impressive teamwork.
We can already establish that there are manganese nodules across large parts of the surveyed area. It is also clear that they are entirely absent in other parts. For us that is positive, because it is simpler to harvest the nodules if they are gathered in certain places rather than spread over large parts of the seabed. Both we and Sweco are now analysing all the data, work that takes time and demands care. The results will form part of the environmental impact assessment, an important step on the way to the application for an extraction permit that is to be submitted to the government in 2025. We are not there yet, and many steps remain, but it feels exciting that we are approaching the point that a few years ago felt so distant.
In Dagens industri I said recently that this is a chance Swedish industry must not miss. The green transition and the geopolitical situation mean that Swedish industry has to reduce its import dependence on metals. So why not make use of the roughly 20 million tonnes of nodules that, according to estimates, lie in the Bothnian Bay?
