Submarine Miner: The Metals Co.'s remote-controlled collector has already scooped up a thousand tons of potato-sized nodules from the Pacific floor.Gerard Barron’s The Metals Co. has a robot that can scoop up copper, cobalt and other seabed minerals crucial for EV batteries. But first, he needs a ton of nickels to pay for it.erard Barron, CEO of The Metals Company, sports a shaggy mop of hair, a rakish beard and a leather bomber jacket with a palm-sized, poly-metallic nodule in its pocket.
The disappointing news: a couple months ago the company was hoping to commence commercial nodule collection by the end of 2024. Given rulemaking bureaucracy, they now say it will be more like mid 2026 before they can deploy thewas provided by the Dutch offshore engineering company Allseas, which also built the robotic nodule collector machine that will be lowered down through two miles of ocean to the seabed.
Naturally, some people don’t think seafloor harvesting is a good idea. Like Greenpeace, which last year, sent two kayaks, two boats and a five-person “” to assault TMC’s research ship off Nauru. A Dutch court ordered Greenpeace International to remove its people from TMC’s ship. “The Greenpeace army created a few problems for us,” Barron acknowledges.