Environmental and Social Impact Assessment for Serra Verde Pesquisa e Miner (DFC-SERRAVERDE)

Regions
  • Latin America and Caribbean
Geographic location where the impacts of the investment may be experienced.
Countries
  • Brazil
Geographic location where the impacts of the investment may be experienced.
Specific Location
Minaçu, State of Goiás
Whenever identified, the area within countries where the impacts of the investment may be experienced. Exact locations of projects may not be identified fully or at all in project documents. Please review updated project documents and community-led assessments.
Financial Institutions
  • US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC)
International, regional and national development finance institutions. Many of these banks have a public interest mission, such as poverty reduction.
Project Status
Proposed
Stage of the project cycle. Stages vary by development bank and can include: pending, approval, implementation, and closed or completed.
Bank Risk Rating
A
Environmental and social categorization assessed by the development bank as a measure of the planned project’s environmental and social impacts. A higher risk rating may require more due diligence to limit or avoid harm to people and the environment. For example, "A" or "B" are risk categories where "A" represents the highest amount of risk. Results will include projects that specifically recorded a rating, all other projects are marked ‘U’ for "Undisclosed."
Borrower
Serra Verde Pesquisa e Mineração Ltda.
A public entity (government or state-owned) provided with funds or financial support to manage and/or implement a project.
Sectors
  • Energy
  • Mining
  • Technical Cooperation
The service or industry focus of the investment. A project can have several sectors.
Investment Type(s)
Advisory Services
The categories of the bank investment: loan, grant, guarantee, technical assistance, advisory services, equity and fund.
Investment Amount (USD)
Not Disclosed
Value listed on project documents at time of disclosure. If necessary, this amount is converted to USD ($) on the date of disclosure. Please review updated project documents for more information.
Bank Documents
Primary Source

Original disclosure @ DFC website

Updated in EWS Mar 26, 2025

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Project Description
If provided by the financial institution, the Early Warning System Team writes a short summary describing the purported development objective of the project and project components. Review the complete project documentation for a detailed description.

As stated by the DFC, the Serra Verde Rare Earths Project (the “Project”) consists of mining and concentrating Rare Earth Element ions adsorbed in clays. The Project is an existing mine located in the municipality of Minaçu in the northern region of the state of Goiás, Brazil. The Project includes the following components: open pit, operational plant, drained tailings piles (retained from screening and filtering), water main, power distribution line, and administrative support facilities (changing room, outpatient clinic, restaurant, R&D area, vehicle workshop, waste shed, fuel station, oily effluent treatment plant, among others). Proceeds of the DFC loan will be used to fund debottlenecking and optimization of the Project's extraction process.

Investment Description
Here you can find a list of individual development financial institutions that finance the project.
Private Actors Description
A Private Actor is a non-governmental body or entity that is the borrower or client of a development project, which can include corporations, private equity and banks. This describes the private actors and their roles in relation to the project, when private actor information is disclosed or has been further researched.

As stated on the company's website, Serra Verde Pesquisa e Mineração Ltda. operates an integrated rare earth mining and processing operation in Minaçu County, State of Goiás, central Brazil. The high value rare earth elements (REEs) which Serra Verde supplies are critical to key technologies that will deliver the green energy transition, such as EVs and wind turbines.

Serra Verde is one of the largest ionic clay deposits outside of Asia with important competitive and environmental advantages due to the nature of the deposit, relatively low environmental impacts and its location in an established mining area, close to renewable energy infrastructure.

Commercial production has commenced from Phase I of our Pela Ema deposit. We expect to produce at least 5,000 tonnes per year of rare earth oxide once we have ramped up to full production.

Private Actor 1 Private Actor 1 Role Private Actor 1 Sector Relation Private Actor 2 Private Actor 2 Role Private Actor 2 Sector
- - - - Serra Verde Pesquisa e Mineração Ltda. Client Mining

Contact Information
This section aims to support the local communities and local CSO to get to know which stakeholders are involved in a project with their roles and responsibilities. If available, there may be a complaint office for the respective bank which operates independently to receive and determine violations in policy and practice. Independent Accountability Mechanisms receive and respond to complaints. Most Independent Accountability Mechanisms offer two functions for addressing complaints: dispute resolution and compliance review.

Client - Serra Verde Pesquisa e Mineração Ltda.:

Address: Rua Pierre Julien Sabatier, Quadra 1, Lote 1. S/N, Condomínio Vila Sama, Minaçu, Goiás, Brazil
Website: https://svpm.com.br/br/home-br/
Phone: +55 (62) 3379-3339

ACCESS TO INFORMATION

Unlike many other development finance institutions, DFC does not currently have an access to information policy.

Under the United States Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), DFC is obliged to respond to reasonably formulated requests for Agency records. However, DFC may apply exemptions from release to certain types of information and may charge fees in responding to requests. DFC has a designated FOIA officer who is trained in how to respond to requests and implement the law. You can learn more about filing a FOIA request at: https://www.dfc.gov/foia

ACCOUNTABILITY MECHANISM OF THE UNITED STATES INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT FINANCE CORPORATION (DFC)

The Office of Accountability is an independent office that addresses complaints about environmental or social issues related to DFC-supported projects. The office provides communities an opportunity to have concerns independently reviewed and addressed. If you submit a complaint to the Office of Accountability, it may assist you by either seeking to address your problems by facilitating a problem solving dialogue between you and those implementing the project and/or investigating whether the DFC complied with its policies to prevent environmental, social, human rights, and labor harms.

You can find more information about the Office of Accountability at: https://www.dfc.gov/who-we-are/office-accountability

How it works

How it works