Brazilian Rare Earths’ flagship is the Monte Alto deposit, a chevkinite hosted hard rock system with an overlying monazite sand component near the towns of Jiquiriçá and Ubaíra, roughly 250 km southwest of Salvador. Alongside rare earths the rock carries uranium, niobium, scandium and tantalum. In this conversation I asked their CEO about the scoping study that came out last week, the ASX forcing a retraction of the first version of it, the hub and spoke development plan into the Camaçari petrochemical complex, offtake, permitting, metallurgy and how they intend to pay for a roughly US$1 billion capex.
TL;DR
Monte Alto stands at 3.4 Mt grading 11.3% TREO with 2.5 Mt indicated at 12.7%, based on a February cutoff, and the restated scoping study on Monte Alto alone shows about US$6 billion NPV, US$968 to 970 million capex including a 30% contingency and a roughly US$300 million acid plant, with payback just over a year and first oxide production targeted for 2031. Uranium, niobium, scandium and tantalum are in the rock but excluded from the resource and from the revenue side of the study, though he told me the uranium capex and opex are already carried in the numbers and that uranium could add US$300 to US$400 million of NPV if Brazil changes its cost plus rule to an 80/20 split. The ASX made them pull the first study because Sulista was about 70% inferred, so the reissued version is Monte Alto only, and he expects enough drilling by year end to bring Sulista back in. Capex to first concentrate is only US$91 million, which is the real story here because it gives them an early cash flow route before committing to the refinery. Cash was A$134 million at 30 June 2026, roughly two years of runway.
What have they done for shareholders lately?
The scoping study is the main recent item, restated to Monte Alto plus a Camaçari refinery after the ASX objected to the inferred component of Sulista. They have a 2,000 tonne per annum trial mining licence granted earlier this year and are trucking bulk samples to a pilot plant at Camaçari that is in final commissioning, with a hydrometallurgical pilot plant to follow by the end of this year, including their own assay lab to get around slow turnaround times in Brazil. Metallurgical recovery of 87% has come from bench scale work at both Brazilian and international labs, using a low temperature acid cure and water leach rather than cracking, and the concentrate step is a dry ore sorting process with no tailings dam. They signed a binding offtake with the French processor Carester covering roughly half their heavy rare earth concentrate, about 150 tonnes per year of DyTb, which also came with a technical partnership on designing and commissioning their own plant. Drilling continues across the corridor including the Velhinhas zone, and he says they have identified more than 50 targets grading over 1%. The Amargosa bauxite assets have been spun out into Alurion Resources, where he sits as an executive director.
How much money do they have and what are they spending it on?
He gave A$134 million as at 30 June 2026, which he reckons is about two years of runway at the current burn, and said corporate overhead is modest with no Australian office beyond a shared space in Sydney, a CFO and a company secretary. The last raise was A$120 million at A$4.68 in October of last year, following earlier rounds done at roughly A$45 million pre money, then A$100 million, A$300 million, A$700 million and above A$1 billion, so dilution has been relatively contained. Money is going into drilling, the pilot plants, the environmental impact assessment work and the studies. On the big number, he expects to need maybe another A$100 million or so before the construction decision, and for the capex itself he is talking about staging it, debt funding the sub US$100 million concentrator, using offtake prepayments, government programmes and equity, and he made the point that the acid plant and the 30% contingency could both be stripped out of the US$968 million if they wanted a cheaper start. There are about 11 million options outstanding, less than 5% of equity, and no warrants.
Upcoming catalysts
Technical: further exploration results from Monte Alto and the satellite deposits, particularly enough Sulista drilling by year end to lift it out of the inferred category, plus hydromet pilot plant results and co-product test work on scandium, niobium and tantalum.
Operational: commissioning of the concentrator pilot plant now, the hydromet plant at the end of this year, an environmental impact assessment for the mine and concentrator filed early next year and a separate EIA for the Camaçari plant late next year, with approval anywhere from six months to considerably longer.
Corporate: an NdPr offtake negotiation that he said is only starting now, potential government funding and partnership discussions, a prefeasibility study late next year or early the year after, and a full feasibility study and final investment decision targeted around 2029 ahead of first production in 2031.
Risks
The obvious one is permitting, since the Camaçari approval timeline is outside their control and radioactivity in the ore means federal level oversight, though the CEO argued piggybacking on an existing industrial complex speeds it up. Regulatory risk showed up already with the ASX retraction, and the same question applies to any future study that leans on inferred material. Metallurgical scale up from bench to continuous pilot is the classic time eater in this sector, and while he expects chemical plants to scale better than physical concentrators, 87% is not yet demonstrated at scale. On offtake, the concentrate carries uranium and thorium, which makes it Class 7 for shipping and, as he acknowledged, cuts down the pool of buyers, with the Chinese being the most obvious taker, which weakens negotiating leverage. Uranium revenue depends on a legislative change that has not happened. Add funding risk given a roughly US$1 billion capex against a A$1.1 billion market cap, and normal price and sovereign risk on top.
Brazilian Rare Earths CEO Interview
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