TThe British company announced that the Barroso mine, which it plans to develop in the municipality of Boticas, in the Vila Real district, “strengthens the position as Europe’s largest lithium spodumene reserve.”
“The 40% expansion of the resource, nearing 40 million tons, is a positive indicator for a potentially longer project lifespan than anticipated in the 2023 Scope Study,” stated Savannah CEO Emanuel Proença.
Proença highlighted that “the benefits are clear for all stakeholders, as the project can thus contribute more in terms of lithium production, value generation, and job creation, payment of taxes and royalties, as well as numerous other socioeconomic benefits over a longer period, all within the same concession area.”
The open-pit lithium mine received a conditional Environmental Impact Declaration (DIA) in 2023, and Savannah plans to commence production in 2027.
Savannah noted that the data collected during the prospecting campaign were processed by technical units, concluding that the “confirmed resource increases by 40%, now reaching 39 million tons,” confirming that “there is significantly more lithium within the already defined project concession area.”
Additionally, the estimated additional resource for exploration (exploration target) “increases by 200%, ranging from 35 to 62 million tons,” indicating that as exploration continues, the total potential of the Barroso lithium project could “exceed 100 million tons of lithium mineralization over the years, sufficient for the production of 47 million electric vehicles—the equivalent of eliminating the oil consumption of the entire current automobile fleet in Portugal, France, and the Netherlands combined.”
Savannah’s technical director, Dale Ferguson, explained that the main objective of the recent drilling campaign was to refine the data on the existing resources within the concession area.
“However, the drilling also confirmed various deposit extensions, consistently showing excellent results. The outcome was a considerable increase in the overall tonnage within the project’s concession area,” he concluded.
The Barroso mine was deemed a strategic project by the European Commission in March 2025 but has faced local opposition from residents, mayors, and environmentalists.
In recent years, several protests and legal actions have been undertaken against mining activities in the region.
