Shares in Vulcan Energy Resources soar on collaboration agreement with Enel Green Power in Italy

Shares in lithium brine player Vulcan Energy Resources have gone on a tear after announcing it had entered into a binding collaboration agreement with Enel Green Power.

EGP is Italy’s biggest geothermal energy producer and will work with Perth-based Vulcan to assess the potential of its 11.5sqkm Cesano licence, which lies 20km north-northwest of Rome.

The duo have also agreed to explore other possible projects in the country.

Vulcan’s shares were up 9.3 per cent by 9.20am on Friday to $5.97.

EGP, which also operates geothermal energy plants in Chile and the US, has previously explored and drilled a number of wells in the Cesano area and gathered data direct from local reservoirs.

“Vulcan and EGP will bring together their respective lithium extraction and geothermal expertise to explore the development of geothermal lithium projects in the area and potentially in other locations in Italy,” Vulcan said,

Dual-listed Vulcan is progressing plans to extract lithium from subterranean brine in Germany in a process it claims will emit zero carbon.

It recently announced that Stellantis — the automaker behind luxury car marques Peugeot, Maserati, Chrysler and Jeep — will take a $76 million equity stake in the company to become its second-biggest shareholder.

Stellantis’ 14 car brands also include Citroën, Fiat, Jeep, Lancia, Opel and Vauxhall. The company is increasing planned battery capacity by 140 gigawatt hours to about 400GWh, to be supported by five battery manufacturing plants in Europe and North America, together with additional supply contracts.

Vulcan managing director Francis Wedin said the investment — which he believes is the world’s first upstream investment in a listed lithium company by a top-tier automaker — represented a strong statement by a leading company about the sustainable and strategic sourcing of battery materials.