Greenland Minerals has reached a key milestone for its giant Kvanefjeld rare earth project in Greenland with its social impact assessment, or “SIA”, now ready for public consultation.
The public consultation offers stakeholders the opportunity to provide feedback on the SIA, allowing all impacts and potential issues to be described and addressed to the satisfaction of local communities.
Once the public consultation period is complete, a final SIA will be prepared that incorporates all feedback from stakeholders.
This final SIA will form part of the package of materials submitted to the Greenland Government as part of the mining licence application process.
The company’s revised and updated environmental impact assessment, or “EIA”, is currently undergoing regulatory review by Greenland’s Environmental Agency for Mineral Resource Activities.
Greenland Minerals Managing Director Dr John Mair said: “It is gratifying that after so many years’ work, we have been able to achieve the first of several important milestones in the long‐term commercialisation of Kvanefjeld.”
“The company’s EIA, which has been conducted by independent experts to very high standards, is effectively completed, in the opinion of GML’s external adviser.”
Earlier this week, the company said it had completed engineering studies that reduce civil construction costs for Kvanefjeld by 44% to USD$175m.
This represents a substantial cost reduction for the project, which had been estimated to have CAPEX costs of about USD$832m in the company’s original feasibility study released in 2016.
Work on process plant optimisation is also nearing completion with the company already flagging major improvements to the concentrator and refinery circuits have been achieved.
In addition, recent metallurgical test work achieved recoveries exceeding 80% and impressive concentrate grades above 22% rare earth oxide content, well above the 14% grade used in the feasibility study.
The increased concentrate grade is expected to reduce the size of processing equipment required in the refinery, which could deliver further cost reductions.
Greenland Minerals expects to provide further updates on the capital and operating costs of an optimised feasibility study in the second quarter of this year.
By Matt Birney
