Verdant Minerals Gets Environmental Approval for Phosphate Project

Verdant Minerals (ASX:VRM) has received approval from the Northern Territory Environment Protection Authority (NTEPA) for the environmental impact assessment for its Ammaroo project.

With the assessment report now in hand, the company will move forward at the phosphate asset by focusing on finalizing the native title mining agreement, acquiring grants for mineral leases and later securing funding for the project’s development.

“This is a major milestone for Verdant Minerals and the Ammaroo phosphate project. The completion of the assessment process by the NTEPA provides Verdant with the regulatory baseline required to move the Ammaroo project towards final mining authorizations and the attainment of statutory licenses,” Verdant Minerals Managing Director Chris Tziolis said in a statement.

He continued, “[t]his marks the end of the most rigorous part of the approval and permitting process. We will also now move on with the implementation and financing stage of the project, progressing toward a final investment decision.”

In June, Ammaroo received approval from Australia’s federal government under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. With the newest approval from the NTEPA, the authority had this to say about Verdant’s project:

… subject to the implementation of all recommendations and the commitments and safeguards listed in the proponent’s environmental impact statement, the proposal can be managed in a manner that is likely to meet the NTEPA’s objectives and avoid significant or unacceptable environmental impacts and risk.

The Ammaroo phosphate project is located 220 kilometers southeast of Tennant Creek in Australia’s Northern Territory. The project has an initial 20-year mine life, with an ore reserve of 32.5 million tonnes at 18.2-percent phosphorus pentoxide for the first 9.5 years of production.

Its feasibility study, released in May, shows Ammaroo’s stage 1 total cost would come out to AU$368 milllion with a 15-month construction timeframe. Meanwhile, stage 2 is estimated to cost AU$200 million and would increase production to 2 million tonnes per year after the fifth year of production.

A final investment decision is planned for the end of Q4 2018, with construction set to begin in early 2019. Verdant was up 11.76 percent on the ASX at AU$0.019 as of Friday (October 19) at 11:25 a.m. PST.

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Securities Disclosure: I, Olivia Da Silva, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.