Talvivaara is a London-listed mining company based in a remote part of eastern Finland, an area of outstanding natural beauty and very little else. The population is sparse and unemployment is a recurrent issue.
Mining specialists have known for decades that the region is rich in natural resources but the quality of the ore found in the ground is rather poor and the cost of processing it has historically been simply prohibitive. Now, Talvivaara has found a solution to this problem. Nickel, zinc and even some uranium have been unearthed in eastern Finland but nickel is probably the metal with the most potential. Talvivaara has pioneered a way of turning the low-grade nickel that comes out of its mines into acceptable-quality metal through a process known, rather off-puttingly, as bioheapleaching. This process transforms the economics, purifying base metal using a combination of bacteria that occur naturally in rock, water and air.
