MineHub Technologies (TSXV: MHUB) announced Tuesday that Japan’s Sumitomo Corporation has provided the company with a C$1 million ($760,000) capital contribution to help advance its digital solutions for the concentrates market.
In a statement, Vancouver-based MineHub said the funds will be used towards accelerating the their joint goal of digitization of the metal concentrates market by promoting the adoption of the MineHub platform and its Concentrates Application as the emerging industry standard for the settlement of concentrates transactions.
The capital contribution is part of the companies’ commercial agreement in August 2022. MineHub and Sumitomo first partnered up in February 2022 with the shared goal of bringing efficiency, transparency and responsibility to industrial supply chains, with an initial focus on mining and metals.
Since establishing their partnership, MineHub and Sumitomo have collaborated on the development of a suite of digital solutions for the concentrates market, including its transformative Assay Exchange solution, which connects buyers, sellers, laboratories and financiers in an integrated and secure digital workflow.
In August last year, Sumitomo started using the MineHub platform in its operations as part of their commerical agreement. The companies are now intensifying their commercial collaboration in using MineHub as the platform to digitally connect Sumitomo’s direct business ecosystem of miners, smelters and refiners.
“Receiving such a capital injection from a global corporation and industry leader like Sumitomo is incredible validation of our vision and the value that our solutions can bring to our customers and the industry overall. This will accelerate not only our continued product enhancement, but it will also increase our market engagement capacity,” MineHub CEO Arnoud Star Busmann said in a statement.
“With Sumitomo Corporation actively using the platform in their day-to-day operations, we will be able to help connect one of the largest business networks in the mining and metals industry onto a common digital standard. Starting with copper concentrates, then expanding into other commodities,” he added.
“Digitization of the metal concentrates market is very important for our business and our customers. But that can only happen if the industry adopts a common standard, and we believe that the MineHub platform and the Concentrates Application is the clear and only candidate to become that standard,” said Takeshi Ishimaru, GM non-ferrous metals and raw materials at Sumitomo.
Shares of MineHub Technologies closed 34.9% higher by the end of Tuesday’s trading session, for a market capitalization of C$25.4 million ($19.1m).