Clean TeQ has formed a 50/50 joint venture, the Future Element Joint Venture, with mine tailings management company Future Element Pty Ltd (FE), to, it says, focus on tailings management, metal recovery and waste remediation opportunities.

Clean TeQ will provide the JV with licences for its proprietary ATA® accelerated dewatering technology and its suite of Clean-IX® ion exchange technologies, with immediate access to both Clean TeQ’s and FE’s opportunity pipeline.

Clean TeQ’s CEO, Peter Voigt, said: “This is an exciting time for Clean TeQ as we look to leverage our technologies into market segments that are long-term value accretive for our shareholders. The JV with Future Element combines years of technical innovation and development with highly credentialled and commercially orientated executives to deliver solutions to the mining industry for its most critical problems. We aim to transform the industry and lead with environmentally sound tailings rehabilitation while generating material cashflows from what were previously considered waste management liabilities.”

The global inventory of mine tailings is estimated at 282 billion tonnes, with 16 billion tonnes of new mine tailings being produced every year, representing a significant opportunity to use Clean TeQ technologies to convert liabilities into valuable assets, Clean TeQ says. The mining industry’s social licence to operate depends on environmentally sound tailings rehabilitation. Clean TeQ’s strategy is to raise environmental standards and reduce tailings management costs via sustainable metal production and enhanced water management.

With the licensing of Clean TeQ’s proprietary ATA and Clean-IX technologies to the Future Element JV, Clean TeQ says it has established a business that can offer the mining industry a holistic, end-to-end mine tailings rehabilitation solution that:

• Transforms tailings into benign and/or valuable products via separation of solids and water to allow solid materials to be rehabilitated or repurposed and water to be recycled or released;
• Unlocks tailings value, via recovery and monetisation of metals and minerals, providing new profit streams and the ability to offset rehabilitation costs and liabilities; and
• Eencompasses development, funding and operation using best-in-class tailings management by an experienced team with a track record in asset delivery.