Greenland Minerals has formally applied for a mining licence over its giant Kvanefjeld rare earth project with Greenland’s Mineral License and Safety Authority confirming that the application has been received.
The application included an environmental impact assessment, a social impact assessment and a navigational safety investigation study for the project.
A public consultation period of up to 12 weeks will soon commence and give interested stakeholders the opportunity to provide feedback on the Kvanefjeld project.
Where appropriate, this feedback will be incorporated into either the environmental or social impact assessments.
Additionally, the social impact assessment forms the basis for the development of the project’s impact benefit agreement, which will be negotiated once the public consultation period is complete.
The impact benefit agreement is an agreement between the company, the Kommune Kujalle – the municipal authority for the region of southern Greenland that includes the Kvanefjeld project, and the Greenland government to ensure that Greenlandic interests are protected during the project’s life.
This agreement will also build on the memorandum of understanding the company has already reached with the Kommune and the Kujalleq Business Council.
Earlier this month, Greenland Minerals completed an optimisation study that reduced capital costs for Kvanefjeld by almost 40% to USD$505 million.
This was due to the development of an optimised floatation circuit capable of producing higher-grade rare earth mineral concentrates and the simplification of the concentrate refining process.
These two improvements led in turn, to a reduction of the scale of the refinery circuit and the size of its constituent processing equipment.
Optimisation programmes have also increased forecast rare earth production by about 8% to approximately 32,000 tonnes per annum of REO, about 6,000 tonnes of which would consist of the valuable magnet metals, neodymium, praseodymium, terbium and dysprosium.
By Matt Birney
