The Kolmozersky lithium deposit in the Murmansk Region has become a point of international cooperation. Recently, China's MCC International Incorporation Ltd and Polar Lithium entered into an agreement for pre-design work. Foreign partners will analyse the ore, help develop a mining and beneficiation technology that will turn the 'lithium sand' into a commercial-grade concentrate. It is expected that by 2030, a mine, a concentrator with a capacity of about 2 mn tons of ore per year and a chemical and metallurgical plant that will produce up to 45,000 tons of lithium hydroxide and carbonate will have already been built in the Murmansk Region. Intensive development of the Kolmozersky deposit should make Russia one of the top three leaders in lithium production in the world.

Interestingly, lithium was found in the Polar regions almost 80 years ago, in 1947. It was discovered during a field expedition by the staff of the Kola branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, A.A. Chumakov and I.V. Ginsburg, and then it was studied consistently for 13 years. However, at that time lithium was not widely used in industry and remained 'in reserve' for many decades. About the prospects of development and use of the deposit from the position of a Soviet scientist of that period can be read in the book Materials on Mineralogy and Geochemistry of Granite Pegmatites. It was written by A.F. Sosedko, who in the 1950s actively researched the chemical composition of ores in the Voronye tundras, where the Kolmozerskoye deposit is located, together with his daughter, Tatiana Alexandrovna. The scientific research was outlined in his doctoral dissertation, which Alexander Sosedko completed shortly before his death in 1957. Tatiana Alexandrovna discovered this work in her father's desk after his funeral and published it as a monograph. Today it is a bibliographic rarity and a unique monument of scientific thought of the middle of the 20th century.



In the 20s of the 21st century, the dream of geologists of the past finally came true. The Kolmozerskoye lithium deposit hides almost 500 thousand tons of the mineral underground, which is 24% of the total reserves in the Russian Federation. The main advantages of pegmatites of the Kola Peninsula are the homogeneous composition of ores and the high content of the desired substance enriched with tantalum, beryllium and niobium. 'Initially, we were talking about a useful component content of 1.13%. But those wells that we have already worked, allow us to talk about contents of 1.26%, 1.43%—up to 2%. This is a significant increase, which enhances the economic feasibility of the project implementation,' Igor Demidov, General Director of Polar Lithium LLC, noted in his comments to the Dprom portal.



Lithium is needed not only in electric cars but in almost all autonomous digital devices—batteries in smartphones, laptops, cameras, drones and thousands more devices are made of it. For Russia, its own deposit of this mineral means technological sovereignty, because previously our country mainly imported the useful mineral. According to Polar Lithium, the production will meet environmental regulations and have high productivity. According to project management, there are several domestic lithium mining methods, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. For example, employees of the Kola Science Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences propose to use sulfuric acid technology, which makes it possible to extract 98% of lithium from ore. The supplier of sulfuric acid will be Kola MMC, which is planning to create a new, environmentally friendly production facility that also produces large quantities of the necessary chemical.

Import substitution will also affect battery production. According to the Head of Polar Lithium, earlier it was planned to send raw materials to China, but today domestic factories are already being built in Kaliningrad and New Moscow. In turn, Kamaz is already waiting for their products to be installed in its own electric trucks.



Today, the main geological and exploration works have been carried out at the Kolmozerskoye field, and ethnological expertise has been completed, based on the results of which a package of compensation measures for the local population from Polar Lithium is being developed. The company is already starting preparations for the construction of the first stage of the mine and related infrastructure—the start of production is scheduled for 2026. The explored reserves are expected to be sufficient for at least the next 40 years, but it can be assumed that the potential of Russia's polar deposits has yet to be unlocked. This can be indirectly evidenced by the construction of new lithium processing facilities in Monchegorsk—the new plant will become a growth point for the city and the region as a whole. 

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