DeepGreen Metals Inc., a Canadian-based seafloor mining developer, has acquired the Tonga Offshore Mining Ltd, and expanded its footprint of mining for Polymetallic nodules in the central Pacific Ocean. They are planning to extract cobalt and other battery metals from the seafloor.

The area called the Clarion-Clipperton Zone is in International waters south of Hawaii and west of Mexico, and contains a significant inferred resource of nickel, copper, cobalt and manganese polymetallic nodules.

The strategic acquisition of Tonga Offshore Mining Limited (TOML), announced this month, gives the Vancouver-based company exploration rights to a third area inside the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ).

The new license covers 74,713 km2  of CCZ seabed, with an inferred resource of 756 million wet tonnes of polymetallic nodules — potato-sized metals-rich rocks that lie in a shallow layer of mud on the seafloor.

Tonga Offshore Mining Ltd held a seabed exploration contract  granted by the International Seabed Authority (ISA), and sponsored by the Kingdom of Tonga.

DeepGreen acquired Tonga Offshore Mining Ltd from Deep Sea Mining Finance Ltd.

DeepGreen CEO and Chairman, Gerard Barron stated [2] that right now they are developing a project in the CCZ, which holds a very large concentration of Polymetallic nodules – “containing enough metal to electrify the entire global car fleet of 1.3 billion cars several times over.”

The advantage is that ocean mining recovers nodules from the surface of the seabed, and with underwater drones and box core sampling a resource estimate can be generated without having to dig or drill.

The company's website states that electrification of global transport and buildout of renewable energy storage will require hundreds of millions of tonnes of nickel, cobalt, copper and manganese. “Industry analysts and electric vehicle manufacturers have raised concerns over availability as well as environmental and social costs of producing these metals. Significant shortages in nickel, cobalt and copper have been predicted to emerge in the coming years. The CCZ seabed contains the world’s largest known deposits of nickel, cobalt and manganese. ”

At the same time DeepGreen also announced that they are partnering with three Pacific Islands nations, the Republic of Nauru, the Republic of Kiribati and the Kingdom of Tonga to “help with capacity building, employment opportunities and future production royalties.”

However, according to the Chief Executive Officer for Tonga's Ministry of Land, Rosamond Bing, the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, is not within Tonga's territorial waters.