MINEX Forum

Website: Eurasia.com

  • Portugal Grants Savannah Resources Second Land Easement at Barroso Lithium Site as Village Resistance Intensifies

    Portugal Grants Savannah Resources Second Land Easement at Barroso Lithium Site as Village Resistance Intensifies

    The Portuguese government has granted Savannah Resources a second administrative easement over 24 plots of private and communal land in the Covas do Barroso area of northern Portugal, allowing the British-based mining company to proceed with geotechnical survey work at its contested Barroso lithium project — a decision that has deepened the conflict between the state and local communities defending what is designated a World Agricultural Heritage site.

    The easement, published in the state gazette Diário da República, was declared by the secretary of state for energy and grants Savannah access to the land for a period of one year. The company said the authorisation will allow it to complete geotechnical work to optimise its understanding of the foundations on which processing infrastructure and other facilities for the project’s next phases will be built. CEO Emanuel Proença described it as “another step in the development of the Barroso lithium project” and “a perfectly natural process in the development of any industrial project,” adding that the company would contact all affected landowners to arrange compensation.

    For the Union in Defence of Covas do Barroso, the decision represents another blow in a long campaign against a project they argue threatens their territory, their livelihoods and their legal rights. The group noted that the project involves four open-pit mines, daily water consumption of approximately one million litres, the use of explosives and a 140-metre-high toxic tailings dam. It also recalled that the Portuguese Public Prosecutor’s Office issued an opinion suggesting that the project’s Environmental Impact Statement should be annulled due to legal violations in the public participation process — a view the government has not acted upon. The state’s earlier decision to grant €110 million in public funding to the project drew particular criticism from the group, which described it as a perversion of the public interest in favour of a private company operating on contested land.

    The first administrative easement, granted in 2024, was temporarily halted by a court injunction obtained by villagers, who reported forced entries onto unauthorised areas and the presence of private security guards in the village during early survey work. Whether the community will mount a similar legal challenge to the new easement has not yet been confirmed.

    The project has received a favourable environmental impact declaration from Portugal’s state environment agency APA, subject to a number of conditions, giving it formal regulatory approval despite sustained local opposition. Savannah, which holds confirmed resources at Barroso of over 39 million metric tonnes — the largest lithium deposit in Europe — is targeting a final investment decision by the end of the year with construction planned for 2027 and first production in 2028.

  • US and EU Procurement Rules Are Shifting Rare Earth Buying Decisions Away From China, Lynas CEO Says

    US and EU Procurement Rules Are Shifting Rare Earth Buying Decisions Away From China, Lynas CEO Says

    New government regulations in the United States and European Union are beginning to change purchasing behaviour in the rare earth supply chain, pushing buyers toward non-Chinese suppliers as compliance requirements make sourcing from China increasingly difficult for companies selling into regulated markets, the chief executive of Lynas Rare Earths has said.

    Speaking at an event in Canberra, Lynas CEO Amanda Lacaze said the US is introducing procurement regulations next year that include restrictions on the acquisition of certain magnets, tantalum and tungsten, while the EU is bringing in sourcing restrictions under its critical raw materials framework. “In both cases, we are observing changed purchasing decisions so that consumers can comply with the regulations,” she said.

    The shift comes after years in which convincing international customers to pay more for non-Chinese rare earths proved difficult, despite China’s dominance as the world’s largest and lowest-cost producer of the metals and magnets used across automotive, defence and technology industries. Beijing’s decision to restrict exports of seven rare earth elements last year in response to US tariffs exposed global manufacturers to supply risk and accelerated government-level action to develop alternative supply chains.

    Washington has pledged to support higher prices for domestic and allied rare earth producers to stimulate non-Chinese supply, but regulatory mandates are proving a more immediate catalyst for changed procurement decisions than price signals alone. Lacaze called for governments beyond the US and Japan to go further, advocating for floor prices to be set as a tool to make non-Chinese rare earth production commercially viable at scale. Australia is revising its strategic reserve policies and its resources minister confirmed in March that the reserve will include a floor price element.

    Perth-headquartered Lynas, which operates a processing facility in Malaysia, is the world’s largest rare earth producer outside China and stands to benefit directly from the regulatory-driven shift in buying patterns.

  • Lumina Metals Opens Copper Concentrate Supply Talks With KGHM After Raising C$406 Million in Toronto IPO

    Lumina Metals Opens Copper Concentrate Supply Talks With KGHM After Raising C$406 Million in Toronto IPO

    Newly listed Canadian miner Lumina Metals has signed a letter of intent with Polish mining giant KGHM to explore a future copper concentrate supply agreement from its Nowa Sól project in Poland, in a development that could link one of the world’s largest undeveloped copper deposits directly to Europe’s most significant copper processing infrastructure.

    The letter of intent, announced on Tuesday, initiates discussions on technical and commercial terms for the supply of copper concentrates from Nowa Sól to KGHM, whose existing copper-silver mine operations in Poland’s Northern copper belt are located in close proximity to the project and host one of Europe’s key copper processing facilities. KGHM is Poland’s only producer of copper and silver and ranked eighth globally in copper output last year.

    Nowa Sól covers 120 square kilometres of the Northern copper belt and hosts a measured and indicated resource of 604 million tonnes grading 1.24% copper and 38 grams per tonne silver — figures that place it among the world’s most significant undeveloped copper projects and one of the largest undeveloped silver deposits globally. Lumina has completed more than 51,000 metres of drilling at the project since its initial discovery in 2014.

    The announcement follows Lumina’s recent C$406.2 million ($297 million) initial public offering on the Toronto Stock Exchange, one of the larger recent copper-focused IPOs in the Canadian market. The company also plans to list on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. Shares were trading at approximately C$11.50 by midday Tuesday, around C$1 below the IPO price, giving the company a market capitalisation of approximately C$1.2 billion.

    Lumina CEO Jordan Pandoff described the KGHM letter of intent as “an important step in reinforcing the Polish metal mining industry” and in positioning Nowa Sól as a cornerstone of copper and silver supply within both Poland and the European Union.

  • Montenegro’s Rudnik Uglja Swings to €6.9 Million Loss as Eight-Month Power Plant Closure Halves Coal Deliveries

    Montenegro’s Rudnik Uglja Swings to €6.9 Million Loss as Eight-Month Power Plant Closure Halves Coal Deliveries

    Montenegro’s state-owned coal mining company Rudnik Uglja recorded a net loss of €6.9 million in 2025, reversing a €15 million net profit the previous year, after the extended closure of the country’s sole thermal power plant slashed demand for its output by more than half.

    TE Pljevlja, which is Rudnik Uglja’s principal customer and the only coal-fired power station in Montenegro, was taken offline between April and December 2025 for a major ecological overhaul costing approximately €70 million. The shutdown caused Rudnik Uglja’s deliveries to the plant to fall to 561,000 tonnes, a reduction of 849,000 tonnes compared to 2024, and sent net sales revenue plummeting to €32 million from €65 million the prior year.

    Total coal mined in 2025 reached 733,000 tonnes — 27% below the company’s production plan and 55% lower than 2024 output. After supplying TE Pljevlja, the remaining volume was sold to other buyers in Montenegro and the wider region. Operating expenses held broadly flat at €29.7 million against €29.6 million in 2024, while staff costs fell to €24.4 million from €26.3 million. The company swung to an operating loss of €7.5 million from an €18 million operating profit in 2024.

    Both Rudnik Uglja and TE Pljevlja are owned by state power utility Elektroprivreda Crne Gore. The thermal plant returned to trial operations in December 2025 and is expected to resume normal output by mid-2026, which should restore coal demand to more typical levels in the current financial year.

  • Two Killed and Five Injured in Explosion at Glencore’s Kazzinc Facility in Ust-Kamenogorsk

    Two Killed and Five Injured in Explosion at Glencore’s Kazzinc Facility in Ust-Kamenogorsk

    Two people have been killed and five others injured following an explosion and fire at Glencore’s Kazzinc zinc and gold production facility in Ust-Kamenogorsk, eastern Kazakhstan, on Tuesday.

    Preliminary findings indicate that the blast occurred during cleaning work on a smoke extractor unit, after which a fire broke out and part of the structure partially collapsed. Kazakhstan’s Emergency Situations Ministry confirmed that a dust-collection unit at the site had exploded, triggering the blaze. The fire has since been extinguished and rescue teams are searching the area for any further victims. No update was provided on the operational status of the facility.

    Kazzinc, 70% owned by Glencore with the remaining 30% held by Kazakh sovereign fund Samruk-Kazyna, is Kazakhstan’s largest producer of zinc and also produces lead, copper, gold and silver. The facility in Ust-Kamenogorsk is one of the country’s most significant metals processing complexes.

    The incident comes at a sensitive moment for the asset. Earlier this year Bloomberg reported that Glencore is closing in on a deal to sell its stake in Kazzinc to local businessman Shakhmurat Mutalip for as much as $4.5 billion — a transaction that, if completed, would represent one of the largest mining deals in Kazakhstan’s history.

  • Norway Joins US-Led Pax Silica Coalition Bringing Sovereign Wealth Fund Capital and Critical Mineral Reserves to Allied Supply Chain Push

    Norway Joins US-Led Pax Silica Coalition Bringing Sovereign Wealth Fund Capital and Critical Mineral Reserves to Allied Supply Chain Push

    Norway is set to formally join Pax Silica, the US-led initiative designed to secure critical mineral supply chains and reduce Western dependence on China across artificial intelligence, clean energy and advanced technology sectors, with the signing scheduled for Wednesday.

    The Norwegian government confirmed the move following a report by Semafor that Washington planned to add the Nordic country this week as part of a broader effort to counter China’s dominance in key materials and infrastructure. Launched in December, Pax Silica is a central pillar of the Trump administration’s allied coordination strategy, encompassing critical minerals access, supply chain resilience and technology value chain integration.

    Norway’s accession brings two assets of particular strategic interest. The country is home to the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund — the Government Pension Fund Global — and holds significant critical mineral reserves, including the Fen rare earth deposit recently confirmed as Europe’s largest. “Norway is home to the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, and the depth of that institutional capital combined with critical mineral reserves are important,” said Jacob Helberg, the US State Department’s undersecretary for economic affairs.

    Norwegian Trade and Industry Minister Cecilie Myrseth framed the decision in terms of economic opportunity as much as geopolitical alignment. “This initiative can give Norwegian companies better access to advanced technological value chains,” she said, pointing to the potential for deeper integration with allied economies.

    Norway joins a coalition that already includes the UK, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Israel, Australia, the UAE, India, the Netherlands, Qatar, the Philippines and Sweden, which signed on in March. The expanding membership reflects growing Western urgency to build coordinated alternatives to Chinese dominance across mineral supply chains that underpin semiconductor manufacturing, battery production and clean energy infrastructure.

  • France Calls Emergency G7 Meeting on Critical Minerals as Paris Launches Plan to Rebuild Domestic Rare Earth Supply Chain

    France Calls Emergency G7 Meeting on Critical Minerals as Paris Launches Plan to Rebuild Domestic Rare Earth Supply Chain

    France has convened an online meeting of G7 finance and industry ministers for Thursday to coordinate Western strategy on breaking China’s dominance of critical materials supply chains, as Paris simultaneously unveiled an ambitious national plan to rebuild its own rare earth and permanent magnets industry from the ground up.

    Finance Minister Roland Lescure announced the meeting while speaking in Lacq, a town in southwestern France being developed as the country’s centre for rare earth processing. The ministerial session is intended to prepare common ground ahead of the G7 leaders’ summit in the French spa town of Evian in mid-June, where critical minerals are expected to feature prominently on the agenda.

    Lescure framed China’s dominance of the rare earth market as the result of deliberate strategic investment and aggressive pricing that drove potential competitors out of business over decades. He drew a direct parallel with the energy crisis of the 1970s, arguing that the moment calls for a comparable institutional response. “One of the projects we have in mind within the G7 is to ensure — much as the International Energy Agency was created in the 1970s when OPEC held a production monopoly — that we develop alternatives through international cooperation,” he said.

    France’s domestic strategy targets the full rare earth value chain, from securing overseas mineral supplies through to refining, alloy production and magnet manufacturing on French soil. The plan is explicitly tied to reducing dependence on China for materials critical to electric vehicles, wind turbines, electronics and defence — a dependency that European governments have identified as a strategic vulnerability following China’s progressive tightening of rare earth and critical mineral export controls.

    By 2030, France aims to produce rare earth oxides covering 100% of European demand for heavy rare earths and approximately a quarter of demand for light rare earths, as well as alloys meeting around 10% of European needs. To support the investment required, the government plans to loosen access to state guarantees for strategic projects, extend and simplify tax credits for green industrial investment through to 2028, and channel additional funding through an existing long-term investment programme and a dedicated metals fund. The government is also planning to approach international commodity traders about securing critical mineral supply, potentially backed by a French state project finance guarantee.

  • Kazakhstan Emerges as Washington’s Key Central Asian Partner in Critical Minerals Race Against China — But Partnership Needs Depth Beyond Dialogue

    Kazakhstan Emerges as Washington’s Key Central Asian Partner in Critical Minerals Race Against China — But Partnership Needs Depth Beyond Dialogue

    Kazakhstan has become a focal point of the United States’ effort to build a non-Chinese critical minerals supply chain, with a combination of vast geological endowment, political will and recent high-level investment commitments elevating the Central Asian nation’s strategic profile in Washington’s resource diplomacy — even as analysts warn that the partnership remains tilted toward dialogue over concrete industrial action.

    The backdrop is a decade-long escalation between the US and China that has placed critical minerals at the centre of global trade competition. China controls approximately 60% of global critical mineral production and 85% of processing capacity, and supplied over half of US demand for 24 critical minerals and 90% of rare earth element demand in 2024. Beijing has repeatedly deployed that dominance as a trade weapon, imposing progressive export controls on gallium, germanium, graphite, tungsten, tellurium, molybdenum, indium and bismuth during periods of tariff escalation. The vulnerability those controls expose has made diversification of mineral supply chains a strategic imperative for Washington.

    Kazakhstan occupies a compelling position in that diversification effort. The country holds 21 of the 50 minerals classified as critical by the United States — including uranium, copper, chromite, gold, titanium, tungsten and rare earth elements — and may contain the world’s third-largest rare earth reserves. Mining accounts for 12% of GDP. In 2025, Kazakhstan allocated $127 million to geological exploration, more than any other Central Asian state.

    The bilateral architecture has developed rapidly. The US launched the C5+1 Critical Minerals Dialogue in 2024 to foster cooperation across the Central Asian region from exploration through processing, and held a US-Kazakhstan Strategic Energy Dialogue the same year, backed by a signed memorandum of understanding. Kazakhstan joined the Minerals Security Partnership Forum alongside major economies including the EU, Australia and Japan.

    The most tangible commitment came at the C5+1 Summit in Washington in November 2025, when US investment firm Cove Capital agreed to allocate $1.1 billion to the development of Kazakhstan’s largest tungsten deposits at Upper Kairakty and North Katpar, backed by $900 million in Export-Import Bank financing — a level of government support that signals genuine strategic commitment rather than diplomatic gesture.

    Yet the overall pattern remains uneven. Most US-Kazakhstan minerals engagement has focused on frameworks and agreements rather than operational projects. The US currently accounts for only 5% of Kazakhstan’s critical minerals exports, compared with 27% going to China and 16% to Russia. Analysts argue that to meaningfully compete with China’s embedded position — built through decades of direct investment, engineering capacity, infrastructure integration and offtake arrangements — the US must move beyond resource extraction agreements toward integrated projects that include geological exploration, processing capacity development, technology transfer and downstream industrial linkages.

    President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has publicly emphasised the importance of US cooperation in developing Kazakhstan’s critical minerals sector, and the Kazakhstani government’s own interest in diversifying away from Chinese and Russian market dependence aligns with Washington’s goals. Whether the partnership translates into durable industrial outcomes will depend on whether bilateral agreements are upgraded to include financing commitments, timelines, technology transfer provisions and enforcement mechanisms comparable to the more detailed frameworks the US has established with Australia and Japan.

  • Uzbekistan Halts IPO Preparations for World-Class Gold Producer Navoi Mining as Government Reassesses Terms and Timing

    Uzbekistan Halts IPO Preparations for World-Class Gold Producer Navoi Mining as Government Reassesses Terms and Timing

    Uzbekistan has temporarily suspended preparations for the initial public offering of the Navoi Mining and Metallurgical Combine, one of the world’s largest gold producers, as the government reassesses market conditions and the optimal parameters for what would be one of Central Asia’s most significant capital markets transactions.

    According to sources cited by UzDaily, the government is reviewing both the timeline and the structure of the IPO, with all previously discussed schedules now open-ended. Earlier plans had envisaged a dual listing on the London and Tashkent stock exchanges, with a target of selling up to 5% of the company’s shares on international markets — a strategy that had already superseded an earlier consideration of a domestic “people’s IPO” format. Two percent of NGMK’s shares had been transferred to Uzbekistan’s State Assets Management Agency to support pre-sale preparation and deal structuring.

    Analysts suggest the pause may reflect concerns that partial privatisation could reduce the dividend flow the state currently receives from the company — a significant consideration given NGMK’s financial performance. In 2025, the combine produced approximately 3.2 million ounces of gold, with revenues rising 46% to $10.8 billion and pre-tax profit surging 71% to $6.1 billion. At that scale, even a modest reduction in state dividend receipts would represent a material budgetary impact.

    The suspension does not signal a retreat from Uzbekistan’s broader privatisation programme. Other candidates previously mooted for public listings include uranium producer Navoiyuran and the national carrier Uzbekistan Airways, and the government has indicated it intends to continue advancing those processes alongside a reassessment of NGMK’s IPO parameters, format and potential listing venues.

  • Ukraine Could Develop Critical Minerals Four Times Faster Than European Average as EU Export Credit Agencies Move to Finance Projects

    Ukraine Could Develop Critical Minerals Four Times Faster Than European Average as EU Export Credit Agencies Move to Finance Projects

    Ukraine has the potential to integrate into European critical raw material supply chains far faster than a typical mining project timeline would suggest, with the country’s vast inherited geological data base and existing industrial assets positioning it as a near-term contributor to the EU’s minerals strategy, according to senior business and government officials.

    Speaking at a recent forum, Serhiy Voitsekhovsky, board member of BGV Group Management, argued that while launching a mining project from scratch globally takes an average of 17 years, Ukraine could achieve the same in roughly four — a fourfold acceleration driven primarily by the country’s extensive Soviet-era geological records, which are now being actively digitised and updated. BGV Group has invested more than €150 million of its own capital to demonstrate that Ukraine holds not only lithium and graphite but also rubidium, tantalum and rare earth elements — materials the European technology sector identifies as critically needed.

    On the government side, Deputy Minister of Economy Ihor Bezkaravayny confirmed that Ukraine is preparing large state-owned assets for privatisation, including facilities that produce titanium sponge and aluminium plants. The objective, he said, is not simply to sell the facilities but to integrate them into high-technology production chains aligned with European industrial needs.

    The financing architecture is also taking shape. European Commission representative Anna Yarosh-Fris confirmed that the EU is already connecting the export credit agencies of Poland, Finland and France to finance Ukrainian critical minerals projects, with the explicit goal of turning Ukrainian subsoil into a shared asset of the EU’s internal market.