Australia's BCM Receives Local Approval of Land Access Agreement for Brazilian Rare Earth Project

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On October 15, Australian mining company Brazilian Critical Minerals (BCM) announced that the Manaus office of Brazil's National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) has formally approved the land access agreement for its Ema rare earth project. The project is located in the Apuí region of Amazonas State, Brazil, with part of its mineral tenements overlapping the Juma agricultural settlement area. This approval covers parcels still administered by INCRA that have not yet completed transfer of title to local landholders, and the agreement remains subject to final confirmation by INCRA's national headquarters in Brasília.

The Amazonas State Environmental Protection Institute (IPAAM) had previously made INCRA's land consent one of the conditions for the Ema project to obtain environmental licensing. In addition to approving the land agreement, the local agency also issued a separate certificate confirming that INCRA has no objection to the project's continued environmental licensing. BCM will continue to pursue confirmation of the land agreement at the national level and apply to IPAAM for the project development environmental license.

The Ema project primarily develops ion-adsorption clay rare earth ore and plans to use in-situ leaching recovery technology, employing magnesium sulfate solution to recover rare earth elements from mineralized clay and processing the recovered material into mixed rare earth carbonate. BCM has included front-end engineering design (FEED) in its subsequent development plans, with process and engineering design work to be carried out around project construction.

The approval on October 15 also forms a direct timeline with the Ema project's earlier land coordination and engineering design work. BCM held a public hearing for the project in Apuí on September 9 to introduce the proposed land use, in-situ leaching operations and environmental management arrangements to local landholders and settlement residents. At the end of August, the company appointed Altris Engineering to undertake the approximately 24-week front-end engineering design, which includes optimizing the rare earth processing facility and supporting infrastructure, preparing equipment procurement documents, and refining capital expenditure and project implementation schedule estimates.