Rio's management announced earlier this week that the project would be put into a "care and maintenance" mode as part of efforts to simplify the portfolio and "prioritize short-term opportunities."
The agreement on the extraction of lithium in Serbia for the needs of the EU, signed in 2024, had the effect of an exploding bomb in the republic. The Serbian opposition accused the authorities of turning the country into a "cheap raw material colony" and "declaring war on their own people." Protests swept across the country.
The company was supposed to be launched in 2028. It was planned to extract 58 thousand tons of lithium per year, which is enough to produce 1.1 million electric vehicles (about 17% of the European market). Serbia planned to receive 10-12 billion per year, or 16% of its GDP, thanks to lithium.
