The Australian mining company announced this Tuesday (31) a new front of international partnership to advance in the processing of rare earths at the enterprise.
The company signed a memorandum of understanding with Spain’s Técnicas Reunidas, a global engineering group that leads the European PERMANET project, an initiative financed by the European Union to create the continent’s first value chain focused on the production of permanent magnets.
In practice, the partnership involves carrying out processing tests with samples of rare earths from Araxá.
The objective is to define which industrial route is most suitable for the project and which products make the most sense along the production chain, from intermediate materials to
The evaluation targets alternatives that can range from a concentrate or mixed carbonate of rare earths to more advanced stages, such as the production of separate oxides of neodymium and praseodymium, two of the most valuable elements in the group and central inputs for the manufacture of high-performance permanent magnets.
These tests are relevant because they do not just deal with mineral extraction, but with the design of the industrial stage that will come after the mine.
The company is trying to decide how far it can advance in Brazil before selling the product to the market: whether to deliver a still mixed material, already with some chemical processing, or whether it can move towards a more sophisticated phase, with separation of individual oxides.
This definition directly impacts the value of the project, the profile of buyers and the potential for Araxá to be included in strategic chains outside of China.
The entry of Técnicas Reunidas also reinforces the international exposure of the Minas Gerais project.
The Spanish company was chosen to coordinate PERMANET within the European Commission’s Horizon Europe program, and works with a network of 32 partners in 12 countries to structure a European supply chain for rare earths and permanent magnets.
For St George, this opens up the possibility of bringing Araxá closer to future European markets precisely at a time when Europe and the United States are trying to reduce dependence on China in the most strategic stages of the rare earths chain.
The company’s strategy is also aligned with the discourse defended by the Brazilian government of expanding the added value of critical minerals in the national territory.
In the case of rare earths, even the production of a mixed compound already represents an important industrial advance, because it requires chemical processing and reduces the volume of raw material exported.
The separation of individual oxides is an even more sophisticated step, as it involves a more restricted technological domain and generates inputs used in sectors such as electric vehicles, wind turbines, electronics and defense.
Today, few countries dominate these industrial stages outside of China, which concentrates most of the global capacity for processing and separating rare earths.
International support
The European movement adds to other articulations already underway around the Araxá Project.
St George has already announced negotiations with the American company REalloys for a possible offtake contract (future production purchase agreement) that could involve up to 40% of the venture’s rare earths.
The company stated at the time that the partnership was part of a strategy to insert the project into industrial chains linked to the United States.
In Brazil, St George has also been approaching the MagBras initiative, a national project aimed at developing the rare earth permanent magnet chain.
The initiative brings together industry, research centers and support institutions to produce metal alloys and magnets in the country, in an attempt to reduce external dependence precisely in the most noble link in the chain.
The project is conducted within the SENAI structure, with support from BNDES (National Bank for Economic and Social Development) and participation of industrial companies.
With this, the Araxá Project begins to bring together negotiation fronts with actors linked to the United States, Brazil and now Europe.
The project
The deposit, considered promising for combining rare earths and niobium in the same mineral system, has 70.91 million tons of resources, with an average content of 4.06% rare earths and 0.62% niobium.
The 4.06% rare earth content is considered high for rare earth projects outside of China, the country that currently dominates the production and processing of these strategic minerals.
To measure this content, the company only considers areas with a concentration above 2% of the average rare earth content, disregarding areas with lower levels. Furthermore, there are still new drillings planned that were not included in the current estimate, which indicates potential for further revisions and possible increases in the project’s resource volume.
