Anglo American celebrates 20 years in Finland

This year marks 20 years of Anglo American in Finland, during which time our Sakatti deposit was discovered in 2009.

To celebrate this milestone, the Sakatti project team in Finland hosted an “open house” event on Saturday, 17 August, encouraging members of the public to visit the site and to learn about the project. On the day, different departments from across the Sakatti team including geology, hydrogeology, geotechnical, and others, set up exhibition booths to interact with visitors, showcasing ore samples and explaining the project from their expert points of view.

The open house also included a host of fun activities for visitors of all ages, with a treasure hunt for children, frisbee throwing, chalk drawing, identification of regional flora and fauna, as well as a big band to provide a jovial backdrop of music to the festive event.

Various presentations and demonstrations of contractors' equipment were also given throughout the day, keeping visitors engaged and informed about Anglo American’s work at Sakatti that started two decades ago.

A state-of-the art mine

Nestled in the heart of central Lapland, the Sakatti project began with mineral exploration in 2004. We found the first signs of mineralisation in 2006, with discovery of the Sakatti deposit confirmed in 2009.

The Sakatti deposit is a treasure trove of minerals and metals. In addition to important base metals such as copper, nickel and cobalt, this high-grade deposit also contains platinum, palladium, gold and silver.

Situated fifteen kilometres north of the small Finnish village of Sodankylä, the site lies in a remote landscape and borders a protected wetland area famous for its reindeer and eagles. The area is part of the Natura 2000 network – an extensive grid of protected land stretching across the EU, established to safeguard Europe's most valuable and threatened species and habitats.

In order to conserve this precious environment, the Sakatti project is being designed as an innovative underground mine with no visible above-ground structures. Our FutureSmart Mining^TMapproach being implemented at Sakatti – where technology, digitalisation and sustainability work hand in hand – will serve to minimise the project’s footprint and places the respect for the natural surroundings at the centre of the mine’s development. Anglo American already has a track record of implementing this innovation-led approach to sustainable mining, with the most prominent example being witnessed at our Quellaveco mine in the Moquegua region of Peru, which is supplied with 100% renewable energy and uses cutting-edge technology to make mining safer, smarter and more sustainable.

At Sakatti, our proposed approach was endorsed in August 2023, when the Lapland Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment approved our environmental impact assessment (EIA), marking a major milestone for the development of the project.

The EIA process, initiated in 2017, and rooted in extensive baseline studies since the orebody’s discovery in 2009, received recognition for its level of detail, particularly in hydrogeological modelling and water management, and for its overall comprehensiveness.

The importance of Sakatti to Europe

Critical raw materials, including copper, nickel, cobalt and PGMs, are crucial to the future of Europe’s economy. They form a strong industrial base, underpinning the production of a broad range of goods and applications used in everyday life and modern technologies, including smartphones, electric vehicles, batteries, solar panels, and many more applications related to the green energy transition.

In July 2024, Ursula von der Leyen was re-elected as president of the European Commission to serve another five-year term. In her “Political Guidelines For The Next European Commission 2024−2029”, she reaffirmed the need for a new Clean Industrial Deal, stating: “The climate crisis is accelerating at pace. And there is an equally urgent need to decarbonise and industrialise our economy at the same time.” To achieve this urgent goal, the European Commission has committed to ensuring the continent has access to affordable, sustainable and secure raw materials to support the clean energy transition.

“Without secure and sustainable access to the necessary raw materials, our ambition to become the first climate-neutral continent is at risk,” said von der Leyen previously in her State of the European Union address in 2022, “Without critical raw materials, we will not lead the digital decade.”

As a true polymetallic orebody, Sakatti is perfectly positioned to provide Finland and the wider EU with a secure supply of critical metals and minerals required transition to greener, low carbon future but also to meeting the fast-growing everyday demands of billions of consumers across the globe.

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