The Metals Company

• Desktop Metal, Inc. (NYSE: DM), a global leader in Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies for mass production, today released a video showcasing how the BMW Group uses ExOne binder jet 3D printers for the serial production of casted powertrain components.
• (Photo: Business Wire)
  ExOne and the BMW Group have been working together for more than 20 years on project development.
• The automaker uses four ExOne Exerial binder jet 3D printing systems for serial production of water jacket cores used for metalcasting, with two more systems slated for delivery.
• When used for sand casting, the sand part is removed and assembled into a mold package used for casting molten metal.

• The Company believes its AI-driven virtual operating environment will enable one of the most transparent natural resource projects in history.
• Hovering the cursor over the collector vehicle can callout its speed, direction, depth, efficiency metrics at any point in time.
• The AMS will draw on expert opinion and hybrid machine learning to improve operational efficiencies and potentially reduce environmental impacts over time.
• TMC believes that the AMS that it is currently developing has potential applications beyond the nodule collection industry and may look to explore these in the future.

• HPEMM is an already refined metal product that requires further processing to produce battery grade manganese sulphate.
• The Bécancour Plant could produce up to 20% of projected North American 2027 demand for HPMSM.
• However, there remains no current processing capacity or production of battery-grade manganese in North America.
• Dr. Matthew James, President & CEO of Euro Manganese, commented:
  “Our growth plans to supply the North American lithium-ion battery market with high-purity manganese are advancing.

• That’s because this United Nations body has the power to permit – or deny – mining on the deep seabed, outside any nation’s exclusive economic zones.
• Developing Pacific nation Nauru has led the charge to open up the seabed for mining, seeing it as a new source of income.
• The ISA has already missed its July 9 deadline to produce regulations governing seabed mining.

Why mine the deep sea at all?

• Land-based mining usually involves processing vast volumes of rock, taking out the minerals you want and leaving the tailings behind.
• The main area prospectors are eyeing off is the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, an abyssal plain 4,000–5,000 metres deep east of Hawaii.
• Read more:
  A rush is on to mine the deep seabed, with effects on ocean life that aren't well understood

But what about the environment?

• While fishing trawlers already tear up large areas of seafloor to devastating effect, mining would open up even more of the seabed.
• Opposition has come from many conservation organisations, civil society representatives, governments like Canada, Germany, Fiji and Papua New Guinea.
• They want a moratorium on seabed mining based on the precautionary principle – not acting until we know what impact it will have.

Should the ISA have the power to decide this?

• The treaty is clear about how we should protect and use the seabed, as part of the “common heritage of mankind”.
• The ISA was created to steward these commons, with the power to make rules in international waters.
• The ISA is, like some other UN bodies, a complex bureaucracy and has been criticised for lacking transparency.
• Even though all 167 nations which signed the law of the sea treaty are automatically ISA members, critical decisions can be made with far fewer.

So is it a done deal?

• Two years ago, Nauru triggered a clause giving the ISA two years to produce a mining code and rules – a feat it had not previously managed.
• Read more:
  Deep seabed mining plans pit renewable energy demand against ocean life in a largely unexplored frontier