Stellantis will also invest EUR5M (US$5.45M) in return for close to a 20% stake in the battery metals miner.

Australia’s Kuniko has signed a binding offtake and equity investment agreement with automotive company Stellantis, which will assist in the development of its battery metals projects in Norway. The deal will see Stellantis take a 19.99% shareholding and secure 35% of the nickel and cobalt sulphates produced from Kuniko’s projects for a term of nine years along with the right to nominate one director to the Kuniko board.

Kuniko is developing five projects in Norway, with two targeting cobalt, with one, Ringerike, aiming to produce nickel, cobalt, and copper. Over the past year, Stellantis has been busy securing future raw material supplies for its automotive electrification rollout plans. As part of the company’s Dare Forward 2030 strategic plan, Stellantis intends to reach 100% passenger car battery electric vehicle sales mix in Europe and a 50% passenger car and light-duty truck BEV sales mix in the USA by 2030.

In June, it was revealed that Stellantis was part of a blank-cheque fund additionally backed by Glencore and VW’s PowerCo to acquire the Santa Rita nickel sulphide mine in Brazil. It has also signed deals with Alliance Nickel for future nickel and cobalt sulphate from the NiWest project in Western Australia and a five-year supply agreement with Terrafame for nickel sulphate produced from the Sotkamo operation in Finland. Outside of nickel, Stellantis also has deals in place with Vulcan Energy and Controlled Thermal Resources for lithium and Element 25 for manganese.