Savannah Resources has reached new agreements with communal land communities, known as baldios, in northern Portugal that will provide further access to land needed for its Barroso Lithium Project.
The company announced the signing of three separate agreements with landholding groups in the Barroso region.
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Under the deals, Savannah currently has land access agreements with two of the three baldios overseeing land within the mining concessions for the Barroso project.
The first agreement covers the Baldio of the villages of Alijó, Canedo and Penalonga, located in the parish of Canedo, Ribeira de Pena municipality.
This includes Blocks A and C of the C-190 (‘Aldeia’) Mining Concession, which hosts a JORC-compliant resource of 3.5 million tonnes (mt) and a reserve of 1.6mt at Block A.
A second arrangement is an addendum to an existing deal with the Baldio of Couto de Dornelas in Boticas municipality, managing land associated with the western end of the C-100 Mining Concession.
The third is a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Secretariat of the Baldios of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, which focuses on integrated planning for approximately 100ha of agroforestry land owned by Savannah.
Each agreement includes provisions for local community participation in project oversight bodies, community reinvestment of derived benefits, and compensation for land indexed to inflation.
Savannah CEO Emanuel Proença said: “These agreements say a great deal about how we want to develop this Project. This is not simply about securing access to land – it is about recognising that the baldios belong to the communities that have managed them for generations, and that those communities have a voice in decisions and access a fair share of the benefits.
“That is what we are doing by giving them a seat on the Project’s Local Consultative and Monitoring Committee and within the Foundation’s governing bodies, ensuring that it is they who decide how the funds received from the Project are applied.”
The company is also continuing to acquire land from private owners, reporting the purchase of 111 plots to date, with 16 further plots under promissory contracts and fractional interests in several more.
