Standard Lithium and Equinor secure $225m to develop Arkansas project
Since December, Standard Lithium has operated a pilot DLE plant at its South West Arkansas project.
Saudi Arabia’s largest mining company is considering an international bond sale this year to help fund a more than $12 billion investment program through to the end of the decade.
Saudi Arabian Mining Co., known as Maaden, is already in talks with banks for the potential issuance and will make a decision on proceeding with the financing later this year, chief executive officer Bob Wilt said in an interview.
“We are going to spend on average $2.5 billion a year over the next five years in growing our phosphates business, our aluminum business, and our gold and base metals business,” he said. “We want to be able to maintain our ability to deploy capital efficiently, so as some of these new projects come up we want to be able to execute on them without overly burdening our balance sheet.”
Maaden, majority owned by the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund, is one of the key entities behind the country’s push to make mining a so-called third pillar of the Saudi economy along with oil and petrochemicals, as part of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s economic masterplan.
A Maaden bond sale would add to a flurry of debt issues from the country’s government and state-controlled companies to finance vast investment plans. One of the largest emerging market bond issuers last year, Saudi Arabia has already kicked off 2025 with a $12 billion government bond and a $7 billion loan for the Public Investment Fund, as the wealth fund is known.
Maaden this week announced it was working on creating a joint venture with state-controlled oil giant Saudi Aramco for the exploration and mining of energy transition metals in the country.
Wilt said the goal within the next year is to formalize the venture and announce first metal discoveries. It could lead to Saudi Arabia being able to produce “significant” quantities of metals like lithium to help develop a domestic battery industry, he said.
That would be a step in Riyadh’s push for a bigger role for mining, which has had limited progress even with the country’s attempt to make it attractive for international firms to exploit potential deposits.
As part of the Saudi drive, Maaden has also partnered with the kingdom’s powerful PIF to create Manara Minerals to buy up overseas assets. Manara’s first deal was snapping up a 10% stake in Vale SA’s base metals business.
Manara has “a healthy pipeline of transactions we’re looking at,” said Wilt, who also sits on the board of the company. He declined to comment on how many deals Manara could do in 2025.
“We’re not just splashing money around the globe, we’re prudent long-term investors,” said Wilt.
(By Matthew Martin)
Read More: Saudi Arabia to scale up lithium expansion as it diversifies from oil
Comments