TMC
TMC the metals company Inc
Do they have a competitive advantage?
TMC (The Metals Company) is pioneering deep-sea mining technology to collect poly-metallic nodules from the Pacific Ocean floor, targeting critical metals (nickel, cobalt, copper, manganese) vital for battery and clean energy markets. The technical innovation seems unique, their partnership with Allseas a business which is driven by the children of the founder, with strong engineering capability(they are also in the pipeline underwater business and lay Nordstream 2 for example) and develop the tech for that and ships in house. Allseas has a huge amount of experience in the field and invests heavy in their capabilities and improvement of their company.
How does the technology work?
TMC's core tech involves underwater robots and highly coordinated offshore/onshore systems:
Collection Process:
TMC uses large robotic collector machines developed by Allseas operating on the ocean floor. They are remotely controlled from modified ships like Allseas Hidden Gem ship, outfitted with lines for power and communication. The machines us air jets to free up the potato sized nodules and suction them up for transfer to the ship via a riser pipe system form depths of 4000-5000 meters.
Production Capacity:
Pilot systems have demonstrated production rates of 86.3 tons per hour. Commercial scale is targeting over 200 tonnes per hour by scaling collector heads and riser capacity.
Processing: once the nodules are on board they are shipped for onshore processing. TMC has agreements with Korean Zinc for refining in US or Japan and PAMCO. Theoretically they avoid a lot of traditional mining steps like removal of overburden and toxic tailing, reducing environment impact.
Limits: deep sea mining comes with engineering and mechanical risks. Machine breakdown, maintenance challenges, corrosion and difficulty extracting material safely 24/7 which is largely unproven at commercial scale.
Product Efficiency concerns: Independent analysis of pilot data suggests lower collector efficiency (about 47% vs 80% claimed by TMC). Also slower collecting speeds, which could limit returns on mining. But I think these are problems which can be solved technical by optimization.
Environmental Concerns/Regulation Problems:: The problems are destroying habitats and damage to living organisms on the nodules. A video from Last Week Tonight sums it up great:
and
https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/76757/5-things-deep-sea-mining-metals-company-tmc/
Summary: I think the Moat is there because of technical development and what they showed. Problems are regulatory and environmental and that's the catch if it should be allowed in the first place. For me that seems largely dependent on the US Government and other Government decision how they decide to make the rules for the mining in the end not the technology in the first place. So I would not invest at the moment. I can't asses that in a good way. I think it is too risky at the moment.
Sources: https://miningdigital.com/operations/the-metals-company-sweeping-sea-bed-for-battery-materials
https://www.allseas.com/en/what-we-do/polymetallic-nodule-collection
https://www.allseas.com/en/what-we-do/polymetallic-nodule-collection
https://iceberg-research.com/2025/05/27/the-metals-company-tmc-a-remake-of-the-nautilus-fiasco/
https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/76757/5-things-deep-sea-mining-metals-company-tmc/