Submission of Parys Mountain Mine Environmental Impact Assessment Scoping Report

Environmental Impact Assessment Scoping Report

Anglesey Mining plc (AIM:AYM), is pleased to announce that it has reached an important project milestone with the formal submission on 31st July 2024 of the Parys Mountain Mine Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Scoping Report to the North Wales Minerals and Waste Planning Service (the “Planning Service”) as part of a formal EIA Scoping Opinion request. The Planning Service assesses mineral planning applications on behalf of the Isle of Anglesey County Council and other County Councils within the North Wales Region.

The Scoping Report forms part of the first stage in the EIA process and comes after almost two years of extensive studies and work by the Anglesey team on site. Cumulative expenditure on the EIA process in that timeframe is almost £300,000. The scoping report sets out the project’s perceived impacts, specifically identifying any crucial and significant impacts which will be assessed as part of the final EIA report, the compilation of which will require further environmental and ecological work. At this EIA scoping stage, the project description remains indicative and will be refined following ongoing mining engineering studies, economic analysis and discussions with neighbours, the wider community and other stakeholders. The mining at Parys will be carried out by underground methods; there are no plans for an open pit or opencast mine extraction works.

The Scoping Opinion request will now be validated by the Planning Service and when that process is completed it will be placed on the Anglesey Council Planning Public Register. At that time, Anglesey Mining will publish a further RNS release providing information on how interested parties can view and comment on the report.

Anglesey’s C.E.O. Rob Marsden participated in a monitoring visit and meeting on site at Parys Mountain on 13th August 2024 with the Senior Minerals and Waste Planning Officer under the ‘The Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications and Deemed Applications) (Wales) (Amendments) Regulations 2020, which mineral planning authorities utilise to monitor mineral sites and their extant planning permissions. A brief overview of Anglesey’s new proposal was also discussed at the above meeting.

The Anglesey team are committed to close collaboration with stakeholders, communities, industry and supply chain participants, particularly around minimising potential environmental impacts and maximising economic development opportunities for local communities.

Preservation of existing heritage areas, sites of special scientific interest (SSSI’s) and scheduled historic monuments and buildings have been a major factor in Anglesey determining the location of new proposed surface infrastructure, and similarly, other environmental and social considerations. The EIA Scoping Report considers how measures to avoid, mitigate or compensate would be identified to address the impacts of the project.

Copper, zinc, silver and lead are essential metals that will be required for, amongst other uses, the transition of the UK’s energy use and distribution towards electricity and away from fossil fuels. To produce these minerals from the Parys Mountain mine, new surface infrastructure will be required, including a tailings management facility, a decline portal and some small ventilation shaft collars. The proposed approximate locations of such surface features are shown in a drawing and are described in the EIA Scoping report. The details may change as the Environmental Impact Assessment process proceeds. Anglesey has decided to submit a fresh planning application, rather than alter the existing one, for several reasons that are outlined in the EIA Scoping Report. This is partly because additional mineral resources have been identified recently during a campaign of exploration drilling and because Anglesey intends to avoid any potential damage to heritage and biodiversity assets that have been designated since the last mineral permission. Finally, technological changes since the original planning permission offer more efficient methods of mining, ore processing, pollution control and tailings storage.

Rob Marsden, CEO of Anglesey Mining, commented: “The submission of the Environmental Impact Assessment Scoping Report for the Parys Mountain Project is a very significant milestone for Anglesey. The assessment of the environmental and social impacts of mining of copper, zinc, lead, silver and gold from Parys Mountain, in addition to the economic feasibility, will play a major part in the permitting processes required to progress the project through investment and financing to mineral production.”

“It is worth reminding investors that Parys Mountain is demonstrably the largest and most advanced copper/zinc/lead/silver/gold project in the UK with a substantial resource upside. In addition, the project is favourably located on a previously permitted, development site with significant existing infrastructure already in place.“