GRANGEX AB’s wholly-owned subsidiary Sydvaranger Drift AS has entered into a mining services agreement (MSA) with E. Hartikainen Oy relating to the restart of the company’s Sydvaranger mine, in Kirkenes, northern Norway.
Hartikainen is a privately-owned Finnish mining and earthworks contractor operating across the Nordic region. Founded in 1965, it provides large-scale open-pit mining and industrial earthworks services, including drilling, blasting, loading and hauling, and operates a substantial fleet of heavy mining and earthmoving equipment, including excavators, haul trucks, drilling rigs and auxiliary support machinery.
Hartikainen has delivered mining and earthworks services to clients in the mining, quarrying, construction and infrastructure sectors, including operating mines, aggregate production sites and large-scale industrial and infrastructure projects in the Nordic countries, GRANGEX says. Hartikainen operates under Nordic regulatory, environmental and labour frameworks and maintains established systems for safety management, environmental control and operational reporting.
The execution of the MSA with Hartikainen is the result of a competitive process for Grangex to select a long-term mining contractor partner for the restart and continued operations at Sydvaranger. The MSA represents the largest operational contract award to date by Grangex and has been structured to support a predictable and responsible restart of operations at the mine, with defined production commitments, performance requirements and comprehensive monitoring and reporting systems. The MSA further validates the technical mine plan and associated mining costs in the financial projections in the Sydvaranger Mine’s Definitive Feasibility Study as published in September 2025.
This study confirmed Sydvaranger mine’s techno-economic feasibility to produce an ultra-high-grade direct reduction magnetite concentrate with an Fe content of 70% with low deleterious elements, with the planned processing circuit upgrades, the company said. The Sydvaranger mine is expected to produce 63.3 Mt of ultra-high-grade direct reduction magnetite concentrate over its 25-year mine life. All produced concentrate will be exported from the Sydvaranger Mines’ captive existing Kirkenes port terminal. The currently estimated re-start of operations is in 2026 with first commercial exports in late 2026.
Hartikainen will act as the principal mining services provider and Hartikainen will deliver full open-pit mining services, including drilling, blasting, loading and hauling. The MSA covers mobilisation, operations and demobilisation, with an initial operating term of five years and an option to extend for a further five years. About 250 Hartikainen employees will work at the Norwegian subsidiary when in full production.
As part of the MSA, Grangex will sell certain existing mining equipment to Hartikainen on an as-is basis, while retaining the right to repurchase the assets at market value upon MSA expiry or termination.
The total value of the MSA over the first five-year period is approximately $645 million and is subject to FID by the Board of Directors of Grangex.
Christer Lindqvist, Chief Executive Officer of Grangex, stated: “The execution of this agreement with Hartikainen is a crucial step in the restart of operations at Sydvaranger. By partnering with a leading Nordic mining contractor, the agreement supports our ongoing project financing process by reducing restart execution risk and providing ongoing world-class operational expertise as we operate Sydvaranger.”
Arto Hartikainen, Chief Executive Officer of Hartikainen, added: “This contract continues our unparalleled 60-plus year history of providing comprehensive services to leading mining companies in the Nordic region and beyond. Sydvaranger has a proud history and the restart of operations to produce a sustainable form of iron ore for the decarbonisation of the global steel industry aligns with our ethos of supporting responsible Nordic mining operations.”
Sydvaranger will be a conventional open-pit hard-rock mining operation, with nine individual pits planned to be mined and ore to be processed at a single centralised crushing location. The ore is crushed on-site and undergoes cobbing with the product being transported by rail to the Kirkenes processing plant. Waste material mined from the pits will be deposited on one of five waste dumps while the cobbing reject will largely be used for aggregate
production by a third party and removed from site.