Amerocap, a US-UK private equity investor focused on energy and minerals globally, will ramp up its investments into critical minerals in 2024. Amerocap's critical minerals platform is Verde Magnesium LLC which is investing across the metallic magnesium value chain: R&D, mining, processing, and metallic production.
Verde Magnesium, with its world-class project team is developing a portfolio of projects in North America, Europe and Asia, with a goal of reaching FID on at least 2 fully integrated projects in the next two years. Our flagship magnesium project in Romania has an accelerated investment program for 2024-2026 and was included in the investment pipeline of EU's European Raw Materials Alliance (ERMA). The project has commercial partnerships with global automotive and aluminum industrial groups with combined revenues of over $500 billion. Verde Magnesium is reviewing up to $3 billion of investments and up to 200 kt per year of metallic magnesium capacity globally.
Bernd Martens, Chairman of Verde Magnesium and former Board Member and Head of Procurement for Audi AG, mentions that "China is producing the vast majority of many critical minerals required for the net zero transition. Compounding this supply concentration is China's own surge in domestic demand of such minerals, which will reduce China's essential net exports. Only a few decades ago, Western economies were the largest producers of metals in the world; but today that capacity, know-how and political will for mining and processing is gone. Verde Magnesium is a future catalyst of an industrial redevelopment that will offer reliable and sustainable supply and technological know-how for the EU and the US".
Amerocap is well positioned to support this development, having successfully built multiple investment platforms in energy production and infrastructure, from the UK North Sea, where over $1.5 billion in transactions were completed, to Amerocap's latest platform in Samos Energy, which aims to deploy over $1 billion in energy investments in Asia and Africa. Samos completed its first investment in July, acquiring the floating energy infrastructure business of BlackRock and Petrofac, whose portfolio covers Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia and is seeking further growth in infrastructure, with the highest HSE standards.