Europe’s lithium supply problem is structural, not cyclical. Battery-grade lithium cannot be sourced from a spot market and delivered in weeks — it requires years of upstream development, precise mineral processing and tightly controlled chemical conversion before it reaches a cathode plant. Europe currently produces almost none of this input domestically, leaving EV manufacturers and battery gigafactories exposed to supply chains running through Australia, Chile and Chinese processing infrastructure.
Portugal’s Barroso deposit, developed by London-listed Savannah Resources, represents the most advanced and largest-scale attempt to change that reality within European borders.
The geological foundation
Barroso sits within the Iberian Massif, a Variscan-age geological formation that hosts one of the world’s densest concentrations of lithium-bearing pegmatite bodies. The primary mineral at the deposit is spodumene — the commercially preferred hard-rock lithium source for battery manufacturers, whose chemical structure enables efficient conversion to lithium hydroxide monohydrate, the form most compatible with the nickel-rich NMC cathode chemistries used in high-energy-density EV batteries.
The confirmed mineral resource stands at 39 million tonnes at an average grade of 1.05% Li₂O — Europe’s largest confirmed spodumene deposit by a substantial margin. Potential extensions of 35 to 62 million tonnes could push the total above 100 million tonnes and extend the mine life beyond 50 years. Portugal’s Atlantic coastline position adds a logistics advantage: Barroso sits within 300 kilometres of five deep-water ports, enabling concentrate delivery to processing facilities in northern Europe or North America at substantially lower cost than landlocked Central European competitors.
The processing chain
Run-of-mine ore passes through crushing, dense media separation and froth flotation to produce spodumene concentrate grading approximately 6% Li₂O — the product sold to downstream converters. Those converters roast the concentrate to convert alpha-spodumene to the more reactive beta form, then leach with acid to produce lithium hydroxide or carbonate. The deposit also contains recoverable feldspar and quartz for the ceramics and glass industries, providing co-product revenues that improve economic resilience during periods of price softness.
At the DFS target of 191,000 tonnes per year of spodumene concentrate, Barroso would produce enough lithium to supply battery packs for approximately 500,000 electric vehicles annually — meaningful but not sufficient to close Europe’s structural deficit, underlining the scale of the continent’s supply challenge.
State commitment and project milestones
In January 2026 Portugal awarded Savannah a €110 million non-reimbursable grant — one of the largest direct fiscal contributions to a single European mining project in recent history. Non-reimbursable grants reduce capital expenditure without creating debt obligations, directly improving the project’s internal rate of return and signalling that the Portuguese state has moved from rhetorical support to material financial commitment. The project was classified as a strategic project under the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act in March 2025. A final investment decision is targeted for end of 2026, with construction in 2027 and first production in late 2028.
A decade of opposition and the June 2026 injunction
Barroso has faced persistent community and legal opposition for close to a decade, with intensity unusual even by global mining standards. A precautionary injunction granted by the Mirandela Administrative and Fiscal Court on 9 June 2026 halted geotechnical fieldwork for three weeks, filed by the Barroso Assembly of Common Land Holders following the granting of a second administrative easement. The Portuguese government intervened by formally declaring the project of national and European strategic importance, arguing the suspension endangered the energy transition framework. The injunction was lifted on 30 June 2026, with no right of appeal available to opponents against the lifting order.
The Barroso region holds GIAHS designation from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, recognising its Globally Important Agricultural Heritage status linked to centuries-old communal land management and agropastoral farming. This designation carries no legal veto over mining, but exposes the project to international environmental advocacy that regulatory opposition alone cannot generate. Environmental concerns centre on projected annual water consumption of up to 600,000 cubic metres and potential groundwater impacts on surrounding agricultural communities.
The strategic supply chain case
A significant portion of global lithium processing capacity sits within Chinese industrial infrastructure, meaning that even when raw lithium is sourced from Australia or Chile, the chemical conversion step frequently passes through Chinese facilities before reaching European battery makers. A domestic European spodumene producer at Barroso’s scale would allow European converters to establish processing relationships entirely within EU and friendly-nation supply chains — directly addressing the bloc’s stated objective of repatriating critical mineral value chains and reducing strategic exposure to third-country processing dependencies.
Something significant has shifted. In the span of eighteen months, Central Asia has moved from a footnote in Washington and Brussels policy documents to a headline. The Caspian Policy Center’s new report — ‘Central Asia and the New Critical Minerals Frontier: Progress in Reshaping Global Supply Chains’ — is the latest in a wave of think-tank, government, and investor analyses arriving at the same conclusion: the region’s critical mineral resources are strategically indispensable.
This analysis cuts through the optimism to ask the harder questions. What has actually changed on the ground? Which players are genuinely committed versus which are signing MoUs for photo opportunities? And by 2030, what will Central Asia’s real role be in the global supply of critical raw materials?
This analysis draws on the CPC report, the EU Institute for Security Studies’ Chaillot Paper on China’s critical raw material weapon, the C5+1 Critical Minerals Dialogue in Astana on 10 June 2026, the Carnegie Endowment’s analysis of the Middle Corridor, the CFR’s report on leapfrogging China’s dominance, and the Forum’s accumulated perspective from running MINEX Asia, MINEX Europe, and MINEX Eurasia.
1. The Geopolitical Wake-Up: Real, But Overdue
The CPC report is unambiguous: critical mineral supply chains are no longer an economic issue — they are a national security and geopolitical issue. China controls approximately 90% of global rare earth refining, 60% of lithium processing, and over 70% of cobalt refining. By 2022, China controlled 100% of global graphite processing. These are not numbers that have crept up on policymakers. They have been visible for years. What has changed is the willingness to act — and the nature of Beijing’s own use of this leverage.
The EUISS Chaillot Paper published in May 2026 makes for sober reading. Beijing’s sharp reduction of critical raw material exports in 2025 — covering germanium, gallium, antimony, bismuth, and rare earths — was not a one-off retaliation against US semiconductor restrictions. It evolved into a systematic geo-economic weapon. The paper documents how China used its export licensing regime to extract information about Western defence-industrial networks, coerce EU trade policy on electric vehicle tariffs, and deter Japan from strengthening its defence posture on Taiwan.
What is less widely understood is how the apparent ‘détente’ of late 2025 conceals a structural tightening. The October 2025 rare earth export controls were suspended for one year as part of the Xi–Trump Busan summit deal — they are due to re-activate in November 2026. Critically, the April 2025 controls remain fully in force; only the October tranche was suspended. More consequentially, China’s export licensing architecture now includes extraterritorial provisions that allow Beijing to restrict re-exports of products containing Chinese-origin rare earth content even between third countries. The détente is not a resolution. It is a one-year suppression of symptoms while the structural disease remains untreated.
China does not merely hold rocks in the ground. It holds the refinery, the processing plant, the magnet manufacturer, and the pricing mechanism. Owning a deposit in Central Asia without access to non-Chinese processing is like owning an oil field with no pipeline.
This is the fundamental reality that too many Western policy documents still dance around. The CPC report is admirably direct about the midstream gap — the fact that even where Western investors enter Central Asian mining, the ore typically still travels east for processing. Closing that gap requires not just exploration investment but decades of patient capital in refining and processing infrastructure. That capital has not yet materialised at the required scale.
2. The MoU Inflation Problem
What should concern anyone serious about this sector is the following. The United States, the EU, Japan, South Korea, and Türkiye are all engaged in what the Forum terms ‘MoU inflation’ with Central Asian governments. The CPC report catalogues a remarkable number of bilateral frameworks, memoranda of understanding, and strategic partnerships signed since 2025. The C5+1 Critical Minerals Dialogue in Astana on 10 June produced more of the same.
These instruments are not worthless — they establish political will and create frameworks for future action. Kazakhstan’s Minister of Industry, Yersayin Nagaspayev, rightly highlighted that Kazakhstan has adopted a new Subsoil and Subsoil Use Code, implemented a ‘first come, first served’ licensing principle, launched a unified digital subsoil platform, and fully adopted CRIRSCO international reporting standards since 2024. Investment in geological exploration has tripled since 2018, exceeding one billion dollars. Western majors including BHP (via its Xplor programme), First Quantum Minerals, Ivanhoe Mines, Teck Resources, Fortescue, and US-based Cove Capital have entered the Kazakh market. Chinese companies are moving faster and at greater scale: Zijin Mining completed a $1.2 billion acquisition of Kazakhstan’s Raygorodok gold mine in October 2025, adding to its existing operations at the Taldybulak Levoberezhny mine in Kyrgyzstan and the Jilau and Taror gold mines in Tajikistan — a three-country “Gold Triangle” across Central Asia. East Hope Group — one of China’s largest private industrial conglomerates and a top-ten global aluminium producer — is advancing a $12.6 billion fully integrated aluminium cluster in Kazakhstan’s Kostanay and Aktobe regions: bauxite mining, a two million tonne per year alumina refinery, a one million tonne per year primary aluminium smelter, and a captive one-gigawatt power plant. The project framework was signed with the Kazakh government in February 2025 and geological exploration of eleven deposits is already under way. If delivered, it would be one of the largest single foreign direct investment projects in Kazakhstan’s industrial history. China National Gold Group has signed an MoU with Uzbekistan covering geological exploration and technology transfer. These are real signals of intent — though the Western and Chinese signals point in very different directions.
But the gap between MoU and mine is measured not in months but in decades. The CPC report states this plainly: developing a major mining project from inception to production can take twenty or more years. Processing and refining require additional capital beyond the mine gate. Political cycles — in Washington, in Brussels, and in Central Asian capitals — run on four-to-five-year horizons. China’s BRI financing runs on twenty-year horizons. This asymmetry is not a detail. It is the central challenge of Western engagement with Central Asia’s mineral sector.
The question is not whether Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, or Tajikistan have the minerals. They do. The question is whether Western partners have the institutional patience, the risk appetite, and the financing instruments to compete with a counterparty that thinks in decades, not electoral cycles.
The US International Development Finance Corporation’s recent approval of USD 2.5 billion in strategic investments and the C5+1 roadmap for geological exploration, mining and processing, and global value chain integration are positive steps. But the gap between announced capital and deployed capital in this region remains historically wide. The Forum has documented this cycle repeatedly: enthusiasm peaks around major geopolitical events, and then the deals stall in permitting, due diligence, or financing committees.
3. Where the Real Business Opportunities Are
The following sets out where genuine commercial opportunities are opening up, rather than where the diplomatic activity is concentrated.
3.1 Midstream Processing — The Untapped Prize
The CPC report’s section on closing the midstream gap is the most commercially important part of the document. Central Asia produces raw ore and exports it, largely to China, which captures the value-added margin in processing and refining. The governments in the region know this and want to change it. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have explicitly stated they want to develop industrial clusters that capture more of the value chain domestically.
For investors and mining companies, this creates a specific opportunity: joint ventures in processing and refining that give Central Asian governments the industrial development they want and give Western offtake partners the supply chain security they need. This is not easy — it requires technology transfer, long-term offtake agreements, and patient capital — but it is where the alignment of interests is strongest. Companies with refining technology and Western governments with DFI instruments should be looking at this window seriously.
3.2 The Middle Corridor — A Structural Shift in Logistics, With a Named Weak Link
Freight along the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route has increased fivefold in seven years, reaching 4.1 million tonnes across the Caspian in 2024 alone. The war in Ukraine has accelerated this, but the trend is structural. For critical minerals, the Middle Corridor offers an alternative to Chinese-controlled logistics networks. Kazakhstan’s commitment to developing this route is serious, and the Hormuz blockade in place since February 2026 — with oil above $110 a barrel at the time of writing — is providing a live demonstration of exactly why overland alternatives to maritime choke points matter.
But the optimism around the corridor needs to be tempered by a specific and underreported vulnerability. Georgia is currently the corridor’s only gateway to Europe. Until the TRIPP route via Armenia and Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan exclave becomes operational, Tbilisi is structurally irreplaceable. Yet the Georgian government has just cut funding for the Anaklia deep-sea port — identified by both the World Bank and the EU’s Trans-European Transport Network as the corridor’s central infrastructure priority — from 150 million lari to 50 million lari. Georgia’s existing port capacity is already nearing exhaustion.
The explanation for this decision is contested, but one strand is disturbing: after a Western-led consortium lost the Anaklia contract in 2020, the Georgian government selected as its preferred contractor a Chinese-Singaporean firm currently under US sanctions. There is a credible case that Beijing, which benefits from the Northern (Russian) Corridor and has no strategic interest in the Middle Corridor displacing it, is quietly applying pressure on Tbilisi to limit the western terminus’s capacity.
Kazakhstan’s position in this corridor is more structural than is commonly appreciated: approximately 80% of all rail cargo travelling between China and Europe already passes through Kazakhstan, making it not an emerging alternative route but the existing backbone of Eurasian overland trade. The commercial opportunity in the corridor’s logistics and infrastructure layer is real — port capacity at Aktau and Kuryk, rail and intermodal connectivity through Azerbaijan and Georgia to Türkiye — but companies positioning in this space need to price in the Georgia risk. Türkiye’s role as the corridor’s westernmost reliable node therefore becomes more, not less, strategically significant if Georgia continues to under-invest.
3.3 Uranium — The Quiet Giant
Central Asia produces approximately 50% of global uranium. Kazakhstan alone, through Kazatomprom, dominates global supply. The US Geological Survey has added uranium to its updated list of critical minerals. As the energy security debate in Europe and the US re-centres on nuclear power as a baseload complement to renewables, and as advanced reactor programmes (SMRs in particular) gather momentum, uranium supply security from non-Russian, non-Chinese sources becomes a premium.
The investment thesis for uranium in Kazakhstan is arguably more mature and more deliverable than for rare earths, precisely because the infrastructure already exists. The opportunity is in midstream — converting, enriching, and fabricating fuel outside of Russian-controlled supply chains — and in ensuring Western utilities have long-term offtake agreements with Kazakh producers.
3.3a Titanium — The Overlooked Aerospace Play
Titanium rarely features in critical minerals analysis focused on Central Asia, yet Kazakhstan accounts for approximately 20% of the global aerospace-grade titanium market — a concrete, active commercial relationship, not a geological aspiration. This matters because aerospace titanium supply has been severely disrupted by the Russia sanctions regime: VSMPO-AVISMA, previously the dominant Western supplier accounting for roughly 30% of global aerospace titanium, became inaccessible to Western manufacturers after 2022. Boeing, Airbus, and their tier-one suppliers have been seeking alternative sources ever since. Kazakhstan’s existing market position fills part of that gap and has been doing so quietly while the policy debate concentrates on rare earths and lithium. Titanium is now on both the EU and US critical minerals lists. For investors and industrial offtake partners, the titanium story in Kazakhstan differs from the rare earth story in one crucial respect: the supply chain is already functioning. The opportunity is in expanding and securing existing capacity, not in building it from scratch.
3.4 Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan — Early-Stage, High-Risk, Potentially High-Reward
The CPC report and the C5+1 framework rightly include Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Kumtor Gold in Kyrgyzstan and Zarafshon Gold in Tajikistan are the flagship projects, but the rare earth and critical mineral potential in both countries is largely unexplored. Legal frameworks are weaker, infrastructure is thinner, and political risk is higher. But for investors and juniors willing to absorb early-stage risk, the geological endowment is compelling.
The legal reform chapter of the CPC report is a necessary reality check here. As Dr. Ruchan Kaya argues directly: No Reform, No Mining. Without clear subsoil use codes, transparent licensing, independent dispute resolution, and ESG frameworks compatible with Western capital markets, foreign investment will remain shallow. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have work to do.
3.5 Technology Transfer and Workforce Development
Central Asian governments are unanimous on one point: they do not want to be raw material exporters indefinitely. They want technology transfer, workforce development, and the creation of domestic industrial capacity. This creates a genuine market for mining engineering services, training, metallurgical technology, and environmental management expertise. European, Japanese, and South Korean companies with this expertise have an opening that pure extractive investors do not.
4. The Six-Party Chess Board: China, Russia, USA, EU, Türkiye, Japan/South Korea
China — The Incumbent with a Structural Advantage
China’s position in Central Asian critical minerals is not primarily about geology. It is about infrastructure, processing capacity, financing terms, and decades of relationship-building. The BRI has locked in logistical corridors, off-take agreements, and debt obligations that are difficult to unwind quickly. Chinese firms continue to invest at scale: Zijin Mining — now the world’s fourth-largest gold producer — has assembled a “Gold Triangle” across Kazakhstan (Raygorodok, $1.2 billion acquisition completed October 2025), Kyrgyzstan (Taldybulak Levoberezhny), and Tajikistan (Jilau and Taror mines, where it is the largest gold producer accounting for over 70% of national output). East Hope Group — one of China’s largest private industrial conglomerates and a top-ten global aluminium producer — is advancing a $12.6 billion fully integrated aluminium cluster in Kazakhstan: bauxite mining, a two million tonne per year alumina refinery, a one million tonne per year primary aluminium smelter, and a captive one-gigawatt power plant across the Kostanay and Aktobe regions. The framework agreement was signed with Astana in February 2025; geological exploration of eleven bauxite and coal deposits is already under way. If delivered, it would be one of the largest single foreign direct investment projects in Kazakhstan’s industrial history — and a textbook example of the integrated industrial model China deploys while Western investors are still circling at the MoU stage. China National Gold Group is advancing into Uzbekistan via government-level MoUs on exploration and technology transfer. Chinese cumulative investment in Central Asia reached $35.9 billion by mid-2025, a 1.5-fold increase since 2020, with Kazakhstan in the first half of 2025 alone attracting an estimated $23 billion in BRI-linked commitments — making it the single largest BRI capital recipient globally in that period. Any honest assessment must acknowledge that China will remain the dominant actor in Central Asian mineral supply chains throughout the 2020s.
The more important question is whether China’s dominance is vulnerable to a strategic discontinuity rather than gradual erosion. The CFR’s February 2026 report makes an argument that cuts against the grain of most current thinking: the United States cannot out-mine or out-process China, and attempting to do so is the wrong strategy. The correct approach is to leapfrog China’s dominance through innovation — scaling rare-earth-free magnets, mine tailings recovery, e-waste recycling, and AI-accelerated materials science. If this thesis is correct, the entire paradigm of building competing mine-to-magnet supply chains in Central Asia may be strategically secondary to the innovation race happening in US and allied laboratories. Central Asian governments and their Western partners should be alert to this possibility: the strategic premium on Central Asian deposits is real today, but it is not permanent if substitute materials technologies mature.
Russia — The Shadow Partner
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has paradoxically accelerated Central Asia’s strategic importance to the West while complicating its own position in the region. Central Asian governments are navigating with care — they cannot afford to antagonise Moscow, which retains significant economic and security leverage, but they are actively diversifying. Russia’s ability to invest in and benefit from Central Asian critical mineral development is constrained by sanctions, capital flight, and the rerouting of its own economy. For the near term, Russia’s role is more that of a constraint than a competitor in the Western engagement story.
United States — Urgency Without Sustained Patience
Washington’s engagement since 2025 has been substantive. Project Vault (a USD 12 billion public-private reserve initiative), FORGE (the Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement), the Critical Minerals Ministerial with 54 countries, and the DFC’s Central Asia investment pipeline represent genuine institutional commitments. The C5+1 framework gives the US a multilateral architecture in the region.
However, it is important to understand what FORGE actually is — and what it is not. The Atlantic Council’s analysis makes a distinction that most coverage obscures: FORGE is structurally different from its predecessor, the Minerals Security Partnership. The MSP functioned primarily as a pooled investment co-ordination vehicle. FORGE is designed as a ‘membership by trade’ model — participation conditioned on adherence to shared market rules and price floors, rather than joint capital deployment. Investment remains bilateral. This means FORGE will not produce a multilateral investment fund for Kazakhstani or Uzbekistani mining projects. It will produce a shared pricing and trade architecture that in theory de-risks bilateral deals — but the capital mobilisation burden still falls on individual governments and DFIs acting separately. For Central Asian partners watching from Astana or Tashkent, this distinction matters enormously.
It is worth keeping the bilateral relationship in perspective: Kazakhstan has attracted more than $480 billion in cumulative foreign direct investment since independence, with gross FDI inflows reaching $20.5 billion in 2024 and investors from more than 120 countries currently active in the country. The US relationship is therefore being built onto an already diversified investment base, not into a vacuum. Kazakhstan signed USD 17 billion in new bilateral agreements with the US during President Tokayev’s November 2025 Washington visit, while Uzbekistan committed to investing up to USD 35 billion in the US over the next three years — directions of flow and deal structures that differ significantly, but which together signal that the C5+1 relationship has acquired genuine commercial weight. But commercial weight at the announcement stage and capital deployed in-country are different things.
The European Union — Engaged But Fragmented
The EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act and the selection of 60 Strategic Projects — including Kazakhstan and Ukraine as external partner countries — represent a serious policy commitment. But the EUISS Chaillot Paper is damning on Europe’s pace of execution: American, Japanese, and particularly European diversification efforts are not on track to replace the volume or range of China-dominated production over the next decade.
The EU’s problem goes deeper than slow bureaucracy or fragmented financing instruments. As of late 2025, despite all the summits, roadmaps, and declared billions, only five EU companies have actually invested in CRM projects in Central Asia. That is not a financing gap problem — it is a near-total absence of private sector engagement. EU policy documents treat Central Asia as five countries of strategic importance; EU commercial reality has concentrated almost entirely on Kazakhstan, which is the only fully recognised EU external strategic partner with both the resource base and the legal framework for large-scale collaboration. Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and even Uzbekistan remain largely outside the EU’s actual investment footprint despite featuring prominently in its diplomatic declarations. Brussels risks building an elaborate architecture of frameworks and roadmaps that covers five countries on paper but delivers in one.
Türkiye — The Underappreciated Swing Player
Türkiye’s role in Central Asian critical minerals deserves far more analytical attention than it currently receives. Ankara’s position as a NATO member, a pragmatic economic partner to both Russia and China, and the institutional convener of the Organisation of Turkic States (OTS) gives it a combination of relationships that no other actor in this space possesses.
The OTS — which brings together Türkiye, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, and observer states — is an increasingly active institutional vehicle for economic co-operation amongst Turkic-speaking nations. For critical minerals specifically, it creates a framework for Türkiye to position itself not merely as a transit corridor but as a co-investor and processing ally for Central Asian governments that want to move up the value chain.
The strategic picture that emerges from available data is striking in its specificity. Türkiye’s mineral engagement operates across four distinct partner-and-material vectors:
Partner
Key Materials / Vectors
Türkiye’s Function
Central Asia
Boron, refined REEs, battery recyclables
Co-investor and institutional processing ally via the Organisation of Turkic States (OTS)
China
Manganese, chromium, lithium, copper
Supply chain alternative and competitor in REE midstream processing
Russia & Iran
Light and heavy rare earth oxides
Corridor guardian; bypassing northern routes via the Middle Corridor
Logistics vectors
Transport infrastructure, regional border security
Gateway and facilitator for Eurasian mineral freight flows
Read together, these vectors tell a coherent story. Türkiye is positioning itself simultaneously as a co-investor with Central Asian partners in boron and REE processing (leveraging the OTS institutional framework), as a competitive alternative to China in REE midstream capacity, and as the indispensable corridor guardian for the Middle Corridor route that bypasses both Russia and Iran.
What is new and underreported is the domestic industrial ambition underpinning this positioning. At the OECD Critical Minerals Forum in Istanbul in April 2026, Türkiye’s Energy and Natural Resources Minister Alparslan Bayraktar made a declaration that amounts to a strategic doctrine: “Having resources alone is no longer sufficient. You must be able to process them. Türkiye is building exactly that, combining extraction with deep processing capacity and high-tech industrial value creation.” The Beylikova REE project in Eskişehir province — described by Bayraktar as potentially one of the world’s largest deposits — already has a pilot facility operational, with plans for full industrial production including separation and processing of rare earth oxides for permanent magnets. A comprehensive Critical Raw Materials strategy is forthcoming from Ankara. This is not transit ambition. This is industrial policy.
The active Iran conflict and Hormuz disruption, which Bayraktar explicitly cited at the same forum, reinforces the Middle Corridor’s necessity. The corridor’s importance is no longer merely a response to the Ukraine war and the sanctioning of Russian routes — it is now being validated in real time by a second simultaneous crisis in maritime supply chains. Türkiye’s own boron endowment — approximately 73% of the world’s reserves — and the January 2026 mining sector MoU with Uzbekistan, which carries the weight of a presidential-level strategic council endorsement rather than a routine ministerial agreement, position Ankara as a co-architect of the post-Chinese supply chain rather than a passive transit facilitator.
The MINEX Asia Forum in Ankara on 24–25 June sits at exactly this intersection. Whether Türkiye chooses to deepen its processing and co-investment role, or remains primarily a corridor facilitator, will significantly shape the commercial geography of Central Asian mineral exports through 2030 and beyond.
Japan and South Korea — Quiet but Serious
Japan and South Korea have some of the most sophisticated critical mineral diversification programmes of any Western-aligned economies. Japan’s rare earth diversification after China’s 2010 export restriction was a decade-long institutional effort that produced real results. South Korea’s Korea Zinc committed USD 7.4 billion to new zinc refining in the US in 2025. Both countries are watching Central Asia closely and have existing relationships — South Korean companies are active in Kazakhstan’s energy and industrial sectors.
The EUISS paper notes that US and Japanese stockpiling and state-sponsored diversification efforts have been more successful than Europe’s — and that this risks disrupting the level playing field between downstream industries. Japan and South Korea’s engagement in Central Asia is likely to deepen significantly through 2030, and they may prove more reliable long-term partners than the US for the Central Asians, precisely because they have demonstrated institutional continuity in minerals diplomacy.
5. A 2030 Forecast: Honest Probabilities, Not Promotional Headlines
Based on the analysis above, the Forum’s assessment of where Central Asia is likely to stand in the global critical minerals picture by 2030 is as follows.
What Will Likely Have Happened
Kazakhstan will have advanced several significant critical mineral projects, particularly in uranium conversion and enrichment outside Russian supply chains, and in copper with one or two major Western-backed expansions. The Middle Corridor will carry materially higher volumes of goods, including mineral concentrates, with improved port and rail infrastructure — assuming the Georgia bottleneck is resolved, either through Tbilisi reversing course on Anaklia or through the TRIPP route becoming operational.
Uzbekistan will have attracted significant investment in gold and copper, building on its already-strong trajectory, and will have made progress on rare earth exploration, though commercial production at scale is unlikely before 2030.
Türkiye will have deepened its institutional role through the OTS and established at least one significant co-processing or co-investment arrangement with a Central Asian partner, most likely in boron derivatives or light rare earth oxides. The Beylikova project will have moved from pilot to initial industrial scale, giving Ankara credible processing capacity for the first time.
FORGE will have produced a shared pricing architecture and several concrete offtake agreements. However, because FORGE is a trade-rules framework rather than a pooled investment vehicle, the capital mobilisation it generates will be diffuse and bilateral rather than concentrated and strategic. The gap between FORGE’s institutional ambition and its actual investment footprint in Central Asia will remain a source of frustration.
Processing and refining capacity in Central Asia will have increased from its current low base, but will still represent a small fraction of what is needed to be genuinely China-independent. The midstream gap will have narrowed, not closed.
What Will Likely Not Have Happened
Central Asia will not have become a major supplier of processed rare earth materials to Western markets by 2030. The timeline from geological survey to commercial rare earth processing facility is typically fifteen to twenty years, and the clock has not been running long enough.
China’s dominance in processing will not have been broken. It may have been reduced at the margin — particularly for specific materials where Western-backed alternatives have been developed — but the structural advantage Beijing built over three decades cannot be unwound in five years.
A unified, coherent Western investment approach to Central Asia will not have materialised. The EU, US, Japan, South Korea, and Türkiye will continue to operate largely in parallel rather than in co-ordination, missing the synergies that a genuinely multilateral approach could generate.
The Wild Cards
Innovation as disruptor. The CFR’s February 2026 analysis argues that the US and its allies cannot out-mine or out-process China — and should not try. The alternative is to leapfrog China’s dominance through disruptive technologies: rare-earth-free magnets that eliminate the most geopolitically vulnerable inputs, mine tailings recovery that yields critical minerals from existing waste streams faster and more cheaply than new extraction, and e-waste recycling at industrial scale. If these technologies mature faster than expected, the strategic premium on Central Asian deposits could diminish even as geopolitical interest in the region remains high. For Central Asian governments, this is both a warning and an opportunity: the window in which their geological endowment commands maximum strategic attention may be narrower than current diplomatic momentum implies.
The China re-activation deadline. The October 2025 rare earth export controls suspended under the Xi–Trump deal are due to re-activate in November 2026 unless the deal is renewed. By the time of MINEX Eurasia in London on 30 November, this will be an immediate live issue. If Beijing re-activates, the urgency around alternative supply chains — including Central Asian ones — will intensify sharply. If it extends the suspension, the pressure on Western governments to maintain costly diversification programmes will ease, potentially slowing capital deployment.
Geopolitical escalation beyond Ukraine. The Hormuz blockade has already demonstrated that disruption can arrive simultaneously from multiple directions. Central Asia’s importance as both a resource base and a logistics corridor increases with every crisis in maritime routes. But escalation can also redirect capital and political attention away from the patient, long-horizon work of building supply chains.
Domestic political stability in Central Asia itself is not guaranteed. Kyrgyzstan in particular has experienced significant political turbulence. Investors will need to see sustained legal and regulatory reform to deploy long-term capital at scale.
Conclusion: The Window Is Open — But Not Indefinitely
Central Asia’s critical minerals moment is real. The geology is there. The geopolitical will is growing. The legal frameworks are improving in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The Middle Corridor is becoming a genuine alternative logistics route — though its Georgian gateway is more fragile than most analyses acknowledge. And for the first time in a generation, Central Asian governments are actively seeking to diversify away from exclusive dependence on Chinese and Russian capital and markets.
But the picture is more complicated than the wave of optimistic policy documents suggests. FORGE is a trade-rules architecture, not a capital deployment machine — and the distinction matters for Central Asia. The EU has five companies on the ground despite its ambitious declarations. China’s export control détente has a hard expiry date in November 2026. And the CFR’s innovation thesis raises a genuinely uncomfortable question: what if the West’s best path to supply chain security runs through the laboratory rather than the mine shaft?
Türkiye’s OTS-anchored positioning adds a genuinely new dimension to this picture. An Ankara that is actively building REE processing capacity at Beylikova, institutionalising economic co-operation through the OTS, and serving as the corridor’s most reliable western terminus is not a passive transit hub. It is a co-architect of the post-Chinese critical mineral supply chain — if it chooses to be.
The businesses and investors who will win in this space are not those signing MoUs at ministerial summits. They are those who are currently doing the detailed geological work, building the processing partnerships, securing the offtake agreements, and positioning in the Middle Corridor logistics chain. They are thinking in fifteen-year horizons, not fifteen-month ones.
At MINEX Asia in Ankara, MINEX Europe in Ireland, and MINEX Eurasia in London, the Forum is convening these conversations — not about what Central Asia might become, but about what concrete steps, in what sequence, with what capital and what institutions, will make the difference between another wave of declarations and a genuine reorientation of global critical mineral supply chains.
The rocks are there. The question is whether the will, the capital, and the institutions are there too — and whether they will arrive before the window closes.
Europe produces not a single tonne of primary magnesium metal despite the material being essential to the automotive, aerospace and defence industries — a dependency that Verde Magnesium, the only European strategic project for magnesium designated under the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act, is working to end with a low-carbon operation in Romania’s Bihor County.
CEO Alexandru Rosu says the project at the Budureasa deposit represents the first realistic prospect of European primary magnesium production in 25 years. China currently provides 90% of global magnesium output, exposing every European industrial user to supply volatility driven by factors entirely outside their control. Verde Magnesium’s process uses an aluminothermic reduction route combining calcined ore and aluminium scrap with electric furnaces, dry processing and full CO2 capture for valorisation as dry ice. Independent pilot tests have confirmed magnesium metal at 99.9% purity, and a life cycle assessment by the German Aerospace Centre has validated what Rosu describes as the cleanest magnesium metal production process in the world. With 100% renewable power, the project would operate as a near-zero carbon primary magnesium facility.
The automotive case for the project is compelling. Magnesium is approximately 35% lighter than aluminium and 78% lighter than steel. For electric vehicles, that weight reduction translates directly into increased range and battery efficiency. Rosu notes that applications are expanding from legacy components into large structural automotive parts, with thixomolding and gigacasting techniques now making intricate magnesium components commercially viable.
Despite the technical case being established, Verde Magnesium has identified a structural gap in the EU’s carbon pricing architecture that prevents European low-carbon producers from competing against coal-fed Chinese incumbents. Under the current EU Emissions Trading System, the CO2 avoided when European production substitutes for high-carbon imports carries no economic value. Rosu calculates that one tonne of European primary magnesium produced via Verde’s route avoids approximately 25 tonnes of CO2 relative to the dominant import alternative — a carbon-cost equivalent of roughly €1,900 per tonne at current EU allowance prices, comparable to the cost gap preventing viable European production. The company has submitted a structured proposal to the European Commission suggesting that CRM Act-compliant projects with verified third-party life cycle assessments should be eligible for tradeable carbon certificates equivalent to their avoided emissions.
The project is targeting quarry restart by end-2026, a 360 tonne per year Mother Plant, and a higher-capacity smelter of up to 30,000 tonnes per year by 2030. A full JORC-compliant mineral resource estimate is targeted for completion alongside the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment in 2027.
The European Union has moved from political framework to project pipeline on Brazilian critical minerals, formally analysing four specific operations covering rare earths, lithium and nickel — the first tangible outcome of the cooperation agreement signed between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at Hannover Messe on 20 April.
The four projects under EU review represent a cross-section of Brazil’s strategic mineral endowment. Serra Verde in Goiás, operated by the Singapore-based Energy Transition Minerals Fund, is already producing commercial volumes of neodymium, praseodymium, terbium and dysprosium — the four magnetic rare earths essential for EV motors and wind turbine generators — on track for roughly 6,500 tonnes of rare earth oxide output per year by 2027 and described as the first non-Chinese operation producing all four magnetic elements at scale. Viridis Mining and Minerals’ rare earth project in Poços de Caldas, Minas Gerais, is targeting first extraction by 2028 with partial financing from a French public development bank. Brazilian Nickel’s Piauí heap-leach facility is already producing battery-grade class-one nickel targeted at European cathode chemistries. AMG Lithium, part of Netherlands-headquartered AMG group, is operating and expanding lithium refining in Minas Gerais under a Germany-funded partnership.
The Hannover agreement itself is a declaration of intent rather than a financing instrument, committing Brazil’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation and Germany’s Federal Ministry of Research to joint R&D, scientist exchange and a bilateral direct-financing mechanism to be elaborated before year-end. What is new is the EU’s mapping of specific Brazilian projects to the Critical Raw Materials Act framework, which requires the bloc to source at least 10% of strategic materials domestically and no more than 65% from any single third country by 2030 — a ceiling mechanically breached by Chinese rare earth dominance without Brazilian supply.
Spain’s Técnicas Reunidas has also signed a memorandum of understanding with St George Mining to test rare earth samples from the Araxá project. Técnicas Reunidas leads PERMANET, the EU-funded consortium building Europe’s first integrated permanent magnet value chain, and the agreement is designed to determine which intermediate or oxide product fits the European industrial processing route.
Brazil’s geological case is compelling: the country holds 94% of global niobium reserves, 23% of rare earths, 26% of graphite and the world’s third-largest nickel reserves. The political dimension has also sharpened. Brazilian officials have consistently insisted on value-added processing inside Brazil rather than raw ore exports, and the Hannover financing structure is being designed around that constraint — a condition the EU framework, with its emphasis on processing partnerships, fits better than the US model adopted at the March Critical Minerals Ministerial.
The next milestones to watch include the bilateral financing mechanism announcement expected before year-end, a committee vote on Brazil’s strategic minerals legislation PL 2.780, and whether the EU formally designates any of the four shortlisted projects as Strategic Projects under the Critical Raw Materials Act.
Europe has built the regulatory architecture for critical minerals security — now it must actually build the infrastructure. That was the central message from a RawMaterials Summit session featuring EIT RawMaterials CEO Bernd Schäfer and Trafigura CEO Richard Holtum, who argued that the continent’s critical minerals strategy is approaching a decisive moment in which continued policy discussion without project delivery will itself become a strategic failure.
The sharpest reframing offered at the session concerned smelting. Industry leaders argued that midstream processing capacity — smelting, refining, separation — should now be regarded as a pillar of national security comparable to defence capability, not as a commercial infrastructure question to be resolved by market forces. Relying on foreign powers for processing is no longer sustainable, the discussion concluded, and maintaining existing European capacity on what was described as “life support” is insufficient without a funded, long-term plan covering both capital and operating expenditure.
The discussion pushed back against a tendency to evaluate critical minerals investment through the lens of short-term cost. The true metric, participants argued, is the cost of inaction — the economic and strategic price of failing to build domestic value chains. The American model of socialising capital expenditure to secure strategic advantages was cited as a template Europe needs to study and selectively adopt, prioritising long-term necessity over short-term price volatility.
On execution, the session drew a clear line between the regulatory phase — now largely complete through instruments such as the Critical Raw Materials Act and various industrial accelerators — and the delivery phase that must define the coming year. A pipeline of more than 60 strategic projects has been identified and designated. The priority is now to move those projects beyond memoranda of understanding and into operational reality. The CRMA’s single-point-of-contact mechanism for strategic projects was identified as a genuine competitive advantage, with continued regulatory harmonisation needed to create the stable and predictable investment environment that long-term capital deployment requires.
On international partnerships, the conversation reflected an evolution in European strategy beyond simple resource extraction agreements. The current emphasis is on creating local value in partner countries through infrastructure support, energy access, professional training and job creation — an approach framed as essential not only for ethical reasons but for the practical goal of building supply relationships durable enough to underpin multi-decade industrial planning.
The European Union has identified tungsten, rare earths and gallium as priority candidates for its first coordinated critical minerals stockpile, marking one of the bloc’s most concrete steps yet toward shielding its economy from supply disruptions after China tightened export controls on several strategic materials over the past two years.
Discussions have begun with major logistics hubs including the Port of Rotterdam — Europe’s largest port and a key gateway for industrial supply chains — over potential storage arrangements for the proposed reserves. Sources familiar with the matter also indicated that magnesium is expected to be included on the priority list, with germanium and graphite also likely to make the final selection. Most of the minerals under consideration, with the exception of magnesium, appear on NATO’s list of materials considered critical to defence production.
Ten EU member states are participating in planning groups led by Italy, France and Germany. France, holding the G7 presidency, is pushing for a permanent secretariat to oversee the initiative beyond the bloc’s rotating political leadership cycles — a sign of ambition to make the stockpile a durable institutional feature rather than a temporary political response.
The initiative follows a late 2025 announcement of plans for coordinated stockpiling and reflects mounting concern that China could weaponise mineral exports during future trade or geopolitical disputes. Beijing’s export restrictions on gallium, germanium and graphite have already disrupted global markets in recent years, while restrictions on heavy rare earths imposed in April 2025 sent dysprosium, terbium and yttrium prices surging. China’s dominance is structural: the bloc imports 93% of its permanent magnets for wind turbines from Chinese suppliers, and the combined market share of the top three producing countries for key transition minerals rose from 82% in 2020 to 86% in 2024.
Europe’s push to build domestic supply chains has encountered obstacles. Projects designated as strategic under the EU Critical Raw Materials Act, such as the Chvaletice manganese development in the Czech Republic, have faced lengthy permitting delays, with fast-track measures under the legislation yet to be fully incorporated into Czech national law.
The stockpile discussions reflect a broader shift across Western governments from market-driven supply models toward more interventionist industrial policy as competition for strategic resources intensifies. The US, Japan and South Korea are also building reserves or financing alternative supply chains to reduce exposure to Chinese production dominance.
A new policy brief warns that Europe’s ambitious 2030 targets for critical raw materials are under threat, not from a lack of resources, but from a failure to scale industrial operations quickly enough. With less than five years to go, experts are calling for urgent action to de-risk investment and harmonise regulations across the continent.
The delivery gap
A collaborative report from REESOURCE and ten other Horizon Europe projects has highlighted that the EU’s transition to green and digital technologies is currently hampered by significant implementation barriers. Despite the benchmarks set by the Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA)—which mandates 10% domestic extraction, 40% processing, and 25% recycling by 2030—the window for delivery is rapidly closing.
The brief identifies that the primary risk to these goals is not geological scarcity, but rather “delayed scale-up, fragmented governance, and investment uncertainty”.
Key barriers to industrial scale-up
Stakeholders from across the value chain, including mining companies, research organisations, and SMEs, have identified several critical bottlenecks:
The “Valley of Death”: Limited access to finance for pilot and first-of-a-kind (FOAK) plants remains the most significant hurdle. Market volatility and price uncertainty frequently stall projects between the research phase and commercial deployment.
Regulatory Red Tape: Fragmented waste classifications and inconsistent cross-border transport rules for raw materials continue to undermine the efficiency of recycling flows.
Permitting Delays: While the CRMA introduces “fast-track” timelines, the actual administrative capacity and interpretation varies wildly across Member States, damaging investor confidence.
Social Acceptance: The report suggests that failing to engage local communities early can lead to delays that “outweigh financial or regulatory barriers combined,” particularly in primary extraction projects.
Recommendations for action
To course-correct, the policy brief recommends moving toward milestone-based funding pathways and introducing mandatory traceability requirements—such as Digital Product Passports—for devices containing rare-earth magnets. Furthermore, it stresses that primary extraction and recycling must be developed in parallel to ensure a resilient European supply chain.
As the 2030 deadline approaches, the focus must shift from legislative design to the “operational delivery” of industrial facilities.
Environmental organisations have launched legal proceedings against the European Commission before the Court of Justice of the European Union over Brussels’ decision to classify the proposed lithium mine in Covas do Barroso as a “strategic project” under the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act.
The action has been brought by the Association United in the Defence of Covas do Barroso (UDCB) and environmental law group ClientEarth. The groups argue that the Commission failed to properly assess the sustainability of the open-pit mining project, despite detailed submissions outlining environmental, social and safety concerns.
According to the applicants, the Commission declined to revisit its designation even after evidence was presented highlighting risks related to water scarcity, biodiversity loss, impacts on protected species and the safety of planned tailings storage infrastructure. The NGOs contend that by limiting its review to identifying “manifest errors” in project applications, Brussels effectively sidestepped its broader obligations under EU environmental law and the Critical Raw Materials Regulation.
In its earlier response, the Commission reportedly maintained that core environmental concerns fall primarily within national jurisdiction. The NGOs argue this interpretation weakens environmental safeguards and marginalises affected local communities, particularly in rural regions such as Covas do Barroso.
By bringing the case to Luxembourg, the organisations are asking the Court to annul the Commission’s decision and clarify that projects labelled as “strategic” must demonstrably comply with sustainability standards and EU environmental principles.
Opposition to the lithium project has persisted for more than eight years, with local residents and civic groups repeatedly challenging permitting decisions. The latest legal move marks a significant escalation in a long-running dispute over how Europe balances critical mineral supply ambitions with environmental protection and community rights.
The European Union is channelling significant financial support into LKAB’s Per Geijer rare earth project in northern Sweden as part of its strategy to reduce dependence on China for critical raw materials. However, the same EU legal framework designed to protect the environment and Indigenous rights is emerging as a major obstacle to the project’s progress.
The Per Geijer deposit near Kiruna has been granted Strategic Project status under the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA), making it eligible for EU-backed loans, guarantees and other de-risking instruments. The designation reflects the project’s importance to Europe’s green transition, defence capabilities and electric vehicle supply chains. Under the CRMA, the EU aims to mine at least 10% of its strategic raw materials domestically and process 40% within the bloc by 2030.
To support these targets, Brussels is deploying financing through tools such as InvestEU, the Innovation Fund and European Investment Bank lending, with nearly €3 billion earmarked for mining, processing and recycling projects. Northern Sweden has been identified as a priority region, and Per Geijer is seen as a flagship initiative.
Despite this political and financial backing, the project remains subject to Sweden’s Environmental Code and EU environmental legislation, including the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive and the Habitats and Birds Directives. These rules require extensive assessments of impacts on biodiversity, water resources, emissions and climate, and allow for legal appeals that can delay projects for years. Strategic status does not provide exemptions from these requirements.
Additional complexity arises from Indigenous rights considerations. The Per Geijer deposit overlaps with traditional reindeer-herding land used by the Sami people, triggering legal obligations under Swedish law, EU law and international human rights conventions. Requirements for meaningful consultation and protection of minority rights sit uneasily alongside the CRMA’s push for faster permitting.
Per Geijer is part of a broader LKAB value chain that includes rare earth extraction at Malmberget and processing facilities in Luleå, all of which have also received Strategic Project status. However, the European Commission retains the right to withdraw this status if sustainability criteria are not met or if projects fail to deliver.
The case highlights a structural tension within EU policy. While Brussels is accelerating funding and political support to secure raw material autonomy, its environmental and rights-based legal framework gives courts and civil society strong tools to slow or block projects. The outcome in Kiruna is increasingly seen as a test of whether the EU can reconcile its industrial ambitions with the legal principles at the core of the Green Deal.
Residents of Cinovec, a remote Czech village near the German border, are mounting growing resistance to a planned lithium mine that the European Union views as a cornerstone of its critical raw materials strategy. The community of roughly 100 people — shaped for generations by the legacy of coal mining — fears that Europe’s renewed appetite for extraction will once again put local health, land and livelihoods at risk.
Mining was once the foundation of the former Czechoslovakia’s industrial economy, particularly in the Ústí region, where up to 80 coal sites operated between the 1940s and 1960s. But decades of pollution, health hazards and economic decline led to the closure of the final mine in 1993. For residents like Josef Fasmann, childhood memories of coal dust turning a snowman black remain symbolic of what the region endured.
Three decades later, mining companies have returned — this time pursuing lithium, a metal central to the EU’s strategy for electric vehicles, renewable technologies and defence applications. Geomet, a public-private venture backed in part by Brussels, is overseeing a $1.94-billion lithium project in Cinovec, believed to sit atop one of Europe’s largest untapped deposits. The Czech Geological Survey estimates that the site could hold around 3% of global lithium reserves, making it critical to the EU’s ambition to reduce dependence on imported refined lithium, which today stands at nearly 100%.
Lithium demand is expected to triple by 2040, according to the International Lithium Association, and the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act aims to fast-track domestic extraction. Yet residents fear that the environmental and social costs — once familiar from the coal era — are being overlooked. Community groups warn that while the EU promotes the project as essential for energy security and defence, the risks of pollution, industrial damage and disruption to local life remain largely unaddressed.
The tension encapsulates a broader dilemma for Europe: balancing strategic resource security with public acceptance in regions still scarred by the legacy of extractive industries. As the bloc pushes for mining to power its green transition, Cinovec is emerging as a key test of whether communities will accept a return to the model they thought they had left behind.
