Sines likely for Galp lithium refinery

Portuguese energy company Galp continues to state that the exact location for a future lithium refinery in Portugal has yet to be decided.

However, the company’s CEO Andy Brown has promised that the final decision will be announced in the coming weeks with a site by the Port of Sines being most likely.
At present there is a 50% possibility that the refinery will be located at Sines where Portugal has its largest shipping port, according to the news outlet Eco Online, but Galp is apparently still in contact with various municipalities and looking at other locations.
“The only location we have ruled out is placing the refinery at Matosinhos (pictured). We are looking at various locations and examining everything that could make for a successful premises reconversion process in terms of logistics, utilities, and gas connections. It is a technical and social study decision and we’ll inform the decision in the coming weeks”, said Andy Brown.
The Galp CEO made his comments at a press conference on Wednesday which announced that the refinery at Matosinhos would be reconverted into an Innovation District for innovation and energies for the future, and which will also include a University of Porto hub.
An agreement was also signed on Wednesday with Matosinhos Council and the Commission for Coordination and Regional Development of the North (CCDR-N) to assure the project’s economic and legal framework of the project which will create up to 25,000 jobs.
Galp also says that this “new district” which will rise on the site of the former refinery, and be dedicated to the future, will be part of the “inevitable and necessary energy transition to a more sustainable world”. However, for the time being the company has not revealed which “clean energies” it has in mind, green hydrogen probably being one of them.
As to the logistics park which was part of the refinery site and which employed 400, some 120 have already left in a process of collective redundancy. The logistics park is still in operation and will maintained separately from the Innovation District.