Boticas, Portugal, Sept. 15, 2025 (Lusa) - Savannah Resources announced on Monday that prospecting in the municipality of Boticas has confirmed "major quantities of lithium" in the Barroso mine area, with the "confirmed resource" standing at 39 million tonnes.
The British company said in a statement that the Barroso mine, which it wants to explore in the municipality of Boticas, in the district of Vila Real, "reinforces its position as the largest lithium spodumene reserve in Europe".
"The 40% expansion of the resource to close to 40 million tonnes gives good indicators for a possible longer project lifespan than that envisaged in the 2023 Scoping Study," said Savannah's CEO, Emanuel Proença, quoted in the statement.
For him, "the benefits are clear for all stakeholders, as the project can contribute more in terms of lithium production, value generation and job creation, tax and royalty payments, as well as countless other socio-economic benefits, for a longer period of time, all within the same concession area."
The open-pit lithium mine was granted a conditional Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in 2023, and Savannah plans to start production in 2027.
Savannah said that the data collected in the prospecting campaign had been processed by the technical units, concluding that the "confirmed resource has increased by 40% and now stands at 39 million tonnes" and that this confirms that "there is significantly more lithium in the same concession area as the project that has already been defined".
He also said that the estimated additional resource for exploration (exploration target) "increases by 200%, to between 35 and 62 million tonnes" and that these figures mean that, as exploration work continues, there is the full potential for the Barroso lithium project to "exceed 100 million tonnes of lithium mineralisation over the years, enough to produce 47 million electric vehicles - the equivalent of eliminating the oil consumption of the entire car fleet circulating today in Portugal, France and the Netherlands combined".
Savannah's technical director, Dale Ferguson, explained, also quoted in the statement, that the main objective of the recent drilling campaign was to refine the data on the existing resources in the concession area.
"However, the drilling also confirmed several extensions of the deposits, consistently delivering excellent results. The result was a considerable increase in overall tonnage within the project's concession area," he concluded.
The Barroso mine was considered a strategic project by the European Commission in March 2025, but it has been contested locally by local people, mayors and environmentalists.
In recent years, several demonstrations have taken place and legal proceedings have been filed, among other actions to fight against mining in this territory.
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