News from the Coordinator – Laurens de Jonge

Welcome to the second edition of the Blue Nodules newsletter.

First of all you see a new name above this foreword. Rodney Norman has stepped down as Coordinator of the Blue Nodules project when he accepted a new opportunity and moved back to his home country South Africa. In June 2017 the Blue Nodules Consortium accepted me as the new coordinator and my first action was to appoint Rodney into the Advisory Board to show appreciation for all his efforts for the Deep Sea Mining case and to be able to make use of his long experience and technical expertise.

We are approaching the half way mark for the Blue Nodules project and we are getting up to steam. A lot has been achieved in the past year and all the Blue Nodules partners are cooperating very well.

In this edition we have three stories for you that show three different angles on the mining of Polymetallic Nodules:

First you can read about the legal aspects of Polymetallic Nodule Mining: the establishment of the legal framework for exploitation in The Area by the ISA. We need to keep up to date with these developments as they might influence the environmental case, the business case and the technical solutions.

Then you are informed about the technical part of the tests that have been conducted on the degradation of nodules in the centrifugal pumps under pressure. This is specifically important for the layout of the pumping system, the processing on board the mining ship and fractions that may be released back into the ocean.

And last the importance of raw materials for the European Supply Chain and the role of Polymetallic Nodules. It is a fact that raw materials play a crucial role in maintaining our living standards, provide our modern digital environment and our ability to switch to sustainable energy sources, although this is hardly appreciated by the general public.

I hope you can appreciate these stories and you can keep track of our progress and news through the website and our conference presence as we are regularly on the road to present and promote our project and Deep Sea Mining. The next year will be crucial for our progress and developments, but I am sure we will be able to present you with many new innovations in the next edition!

Laurens de Jonge