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Construction of the world’s first deep-sea mining machines has been completed, helping Nautilus Minerals’ plans to mine the Pacific Ocean seabed for copper and gold.
The $500m project offers the prospect of extracting high-grade minerals without the large overheads and long timescales of land-based mining.
However, deep-sea mining faces great technical challenges and must overcome potential environmental concerns.
Over the past five years SMD, which remotely operates underwater vehicles (ROVs), has designed and built for Nautilus Minerals three large machines, with a combined value of $100m.
The three machines, weighing between 220 and 310 tonnes and measuring up to 7.5m high, will work 1,600m down on the seabed off Papua New Guinea.
Nautilus said that the slowdown in the global economy had not undermined the commercial argument for deep-sea mining.
“The [mineral] grades you get on the sea floor are much higher than on land,” said Mike Johnston, chief executive and president. “You are able to produce the material at competitive prices with the machines we have here.”
The machines, assembled in the north-east of England, have huge spikes like medieval cudgels to tear through the seabed to mine gold and copper ore before pumping it to the surface.
The three SMD machines are due to leave Tyneside in early 2016 for shallow-water trials.
Mining operations off Papua New Guinea, for which Nautilus has the necessary licence and environmental permits, are due to begin in early 2018.
Nautilus was listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange in 2006; Papua New Guinea is its first commercial operation. Its biggest backers are Mawarid Mining and Metalloinvest. Nautilus said it expected to raise additional capital next year.
SMD is now owned by CRRC Times Electric of China. Mike Jones, SMD deputy chief executive, said he hoped that the project, which is being closely watched by the mining sector, will lead to more orders. He said: “It this works, it will be the start of a new industry.”
Seabed mapping has been used to identify hydrothermal vents where mineral deposits accumulate.