US and European mining companies need to hurry up and invest in Greenland otherwise it will have to look elsewhere for help exploiting its minerals, including from China, a minister for the vast Arctic territory has warned.
“We want to develop our business sector and diversify it, and that requires investments from outside,’’ Naaja Nathanielsen, Greenland’s minister for business and mineral resources, told the Financial Times.
When asked about turning to China, she replied: ‘‘We do want to partner up with European and American partners. But if they don’t show up I think we need to look elsewhere.”
The comments demonstrate Greenland’s desire to get western help to expand its economy in mining and tourism, with United Airlines due to start flying from New York to the capital Nuuk from next month.
Greenland is home to large but fairly inaccessible deposits of minerals including gold and copper, and is located in a geopolitically crucial area in the Arctic.
Nathanielsen told the FT that she found Trump’s threats to take control of Greenland “disrespectful and distasteful”. Her comments underscore the increasing anger felt by Greenlanders at Trump’s aggressive approach to the island of 57,000 people.
She said that despite Trump’s rhetoric, there was little interest from China in mining deals — right now there are only two Chinese mining companies in Greenland, but both are minority shareholders in inactive projects. She speculated that Chinese investors might be holding back because they don’t want “to provoke anything”.
Her comments come as the country hailed the awarding of its first licence under a new mining code to a Danish-French group to extract anorthosite, a mineral used in the fibreglass industry.
The €150mn mining project in Western Greenland aims to start construction as soon as next year, according to Claus Stoltenborg, chief executive of Greenland Anorthosite Mining.
The company’s backers include a Greenlandic state pension fund, Danish bank Arbejdernes Landsbank, and Jean Boulle, a French mining group.
Nathanielsen said the new four-party coalition government in Nuuk was ‘‘first and foremost committed to creating development for Greenland and Greenlanders” and would prefer to work with “allies and like-minded partners”.
