Exploration for CRM (Critical Raw Materials) in Old Boliden Mine Tailings
In the last week of September 2022, a team from Boliden, SGU and Ludwig-Maximilians Universität went to the Northern Sweden to conduct tailings explorations in two closed Boliden mines:
- The Laisvall mine which was a Lead mine, operated 1938 to 2001.
- The Kristineberg mine which was a Zinc, Copper, Lead, Gold and Silver mine, operated 1940 to 1987.
Hand drilling in Laisvall in the search for CRM (Soraya Heuss-Aßbichler and Ronald Arvidsson).
With a small tracked drill rig (1st picture) a number of drill cores were taken down to 20 meters. A hand drill (2nd picture) for sampling down to 7 meters was also used in the process.
We have reasons to believe that we might find Cobalt (Laisvall) and Germanium (Kristineberg), but the drill cores will be analysed for all CRM, SRM and REE in the upcoming weeks.
Ronald Arivdsson (SGU), Soraya Heuss-Aßbichler (Ludwig-Maximilians Universität), Rodrigo Jr Embile (Boliden) and Erik Ronne (Boliden) participated in the field trip.