LiCuPlus

Ensuring a reliable and diversified supply of Critical Raw Materials (CRM) is vital for maintaining Europe’s technological sovereignty and supporting both the green and digital transitions. Copper and lithium are particularly strategic, given their indispensable role in electrification, renewable grids, digital infrastructure, advanced batteries, and e-mobility. With increasing worldwide demand, ensuring secure and sustainable supply for EU is urgent. Strengthening EU–Chile cooperation is therefore key, as Chile is the world’s leading copper producer and among the top holders of global lithium reserves. Furthermore, Chile maintains a strong sustainability agenda. LiCuPlus focuses on innovative technology developments applied in advanced production routes of copper and lithium, bringing together key industrial and academic partners from Chile and the EU. In the copper value-chain, it links ore, extraction, processing, and refining steps via advanced geometallurgy, develops an efficient technology to tackle arsenic-rich copper concentrates from Chile to increase their value, advances a cost-effective technology tailored to increase the efficiency of European processors leading to higher copper yields, and advances two alternative integrated processing routes for high yield, multi-material recovery and low-carbon copper recovery optimised for EU-Chile industrial contexts. LiCuPlus innovative production routes will achieve 98% reduction of Cu-slag, 99% of hazardous arsenic-waste reduction and saving of 2 Mt CO2-e/y equivalent to ~35% of EU copper sector GHG 35% emissions, while processing 250kt/y of responsible copper supply to the EU and valorising minor materials such as As, Sb, Bi, Ge, and REE. For lithium production, LiCuPlus demonstrates a combination of DLE and brine-concentration on low-grade Chilean brines preserving 11 M m³ water while increase the lithium recovery by 30kt/y Li2CO₃, LiOH, and Li-metal production as battery precursors. LiCuPlus technol