Kokkola Material Week 2021 – towards sustainable future

Kimmo Tiilikainen, Director General of the Geological Survey of Finland

The international Kokkola Material Week is an annual event that is held in the city of Kokkola.  The aim of the event is to offer high-level coverage of current research and development prospects in the chemical, bio-economy and mineral economy sectors. The week is divided to seminar days which focus on each of the themes on a given day. This year the event was a hybrid one, combining live event with online talks and streaming.

GeoKokkola seminar day 16th Nov 2021

The GeoKokkola seminar day had two sessions. The first was about know-how and education, and the second discussed about the Finnish battery cluster.

There are no specific education or training for the jobs in the battery value chain, but required skills and know-how are taught in the field of technical education on different levels of the educational system, told Johanna Särkijärvi from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment of Finland. The challenge is to attract students to choose the jobs in the battery industry, while other industries are interested in them too, mining among those. Battery and mining industries need to better communicate their sustainability, competitiveness, regenerative capacity, and technological pioneering. Young talents, both in Finland and those coming from abroad, are looking for significance and meaning in their jobs. MinePro project aims to address these challenges and to help the industries to attract applicants and keep them in house.

Educating people for the future jobs comes with responsibility to offer work for them, reminded Professor Ulla Lassi from the University of Oulu/Kokkola University Consortium Chydenius. Based on GTK Mintec and Keliber presentations, circular economy, fighting the climate change and digitalization require lots of educated workforce in near future. Leaving a minimal environmental impact and chemical safety are essential for Keliber, who will recruit up to 200 people in the coming years. In a longer perspective Sokli will also need experts and specialists to be able to secure the European critical raw materials supply.

Finnish Battery Cluster

The battery cluster session discussed about value chains and the importance of each step in reducing carbon footprint. The better companies can cover their value chains from the production of raw materials, the better they can trace and manage the environmental impacts. Northvolt comes with a mission to build the world´s greenest battery and they want to be industry forerunner in decreasing the battery industry carbon footprint. It is important to have raw material supply closer to the European battery manufacturers, which Keliber is addressing soon once they start lithium production. At the other end of the battery loop is reusing and recycling of the battery waste, which Fortum is providing services for. They recycle chemicals and can recover up to 95 % or the critical metals from industrial size batteries black mass. They have a low CO2 footprint recycling process that uses above best available technologies.

Finland has well recognized the strengths in the battery industry. We have high level know-how and education, strong supply chains all the way from raw material production to reusing and recycling, and strong will to develop sustainable mining and battery industries to bring green energy storages on the market. Attracting enough skilled workforce to be part of reducing carbon footprint and fighting climate change is a challenge, which we need to pay attention to.