Ann: Mineral Resources Increased to 1.1 Billion Tonnes, page-18

It was good to see MEI's Dr Carvalho on the BNDES panel this week in Rio with most of the panel conducted in local language. I picked up from the poor live automated translation he pitched MEI with a 100 year mine life when discussing the project. It was also good to see others like Neo recommending to the Brazilians to invest in the midstream REE processing and in the meantime, send the concentrate to existing separation facilities overseas (ex China). No surprise from Neo saying this, but there is more that just Neo in this space. I like the CIT SENAI ITR magnet manufacturing lab (100 tonnes/year of magnets starting capacity) and the investment they are making across Brazil (~800M dollars) but specifically in Minas Gerais.

It appears it's not lost on the Brazilians that reduced red tape is effective in stimulating investments and this was hammered home in the following panel with comments in local language from CTM's director with their recent Jaguar LI approval. It also seems fairly clear that the Brazilians are serious about investing in this space, and of course doing so in an environmentally friendly way. Not all is perfect as some panelists point out (such as dealing with radionuclides), but the Brazilians appear to recognise their value and their potential competitiveness on a world stage, but particularly to the Chinese and this surely is becoming clearer, if it wasn't already clear before this week, to the Brazilian government and all involved in the conference. That is, invest in us and in facilitating midstream and downstream, we have competitive world class projects.

What happens outside the official agenda is of course what matters most, but to have people like Dr Carvalho slotted in locally working this through the process is very nice to see in action. I look forward to seeing investments hopefully come out of the BIP process for MEI (and CTM). They are in prime position to get them at the right time.