Viridis opens Brazil demo plant as hopeful EU rare earths supplier

China controls 80-90% of rare earths as EU scrambles for alternatives

Viridis Mining and Minerals, an Australia-listed company with assets in Brazil, Australia and Canada, opened a demonstration plant in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state aimed at producing rare earth powders from the surface of its mine, the Guardian reported.

The plant, branded Colossus, produces a crumbly powder that will then be further separated — potentially in France — to isolate rare earths used in cars, wind turbines and military jets, the Guardian reported. Moreno said the project aims for “around 5% of the world’s rare earths market share in terms of those precious magnets.”

Viridis is already attracting attention in Brussels, where diversification of supply chains away from China is a top priority of European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, the Guardian reported.

The push comes against a backdrop in which China controls between 80% and 90% of the world’s raw materials and processed rare earth end products, the Guardian reported — a position that gives Beijing powerful leverage over global manufacturing. The Chinese exchange rate is also driving down the cost of imports from China, the Guardian reported, compounding that leverage.

Moreno, whose company is working with French chemical company Solvay to process the rare earths, told the Guardian it is “paramount” to end China’s “stranglehold” on rare earths and “imperative” that Trump and Xi reach a deal when they meet Thursday for their second summit of the year.

“The market is nervous,” Moreno said.

China first imposed rare earth export controls in April 2025, hitting the auto industries in the EU, United Kingdom, United States and Japan. After an October 2025 Trump-Xi summit in South Korea, Xi agreed to suspend the introduction of even stricter global restrictions, but only for 12 months. Industry leaders had hoped the two leaders would seal a deal to extend the suspension at their May summit, the Guardian reported, but the question remains hanging over this week’s meeting.

“It cannot not be extended if they are to continue to have these presidents’ meetings regularly,” said Kurt Tong, a managing partner of the Washington strategic advisory and public policy firm the Asia Group.

Tong said a suspension deal could be delayed until November, when Trump is expected to travel to China again to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) governmental forum of 21 countries.

EU trade commissioner Šefčovič will travel to Beijing on October 8 for his own summit with Commerce Minister Wang Wentao to try to head off a trade war, the Guardian reported. The EU is “deeply concerned” about what Šefčovič has said is the “unsustainable” deficit with China, now running at €1 billion a day, with the scale of exports of electric vehicles, cars and renewable energy machinery as well as components deep in supply chains causing alarm.

While Šefčovič heads the urgent trade mission, senior EU politicians and officials are scrambling to find alternative supplies of critical raw materials and rare earths, the Guardian reported.

Eurometal, a trade group representing buyers of steel products, protests that Brussels does not fully appreciate the pressures industries are under, with component buyers and original equipment manufacturers under daily pressure to opt for Chinese goods — which can sometimes be 30% cheaper than domestic alternatives, the Guardian reported.

Jozef Síkela, the EU’s international partnership commissioner and a Czech politician, visited Viridis’s Colossus plant in Brazil in June to hear how the company hopes to win 5% of the rare earths market, the Guardian reported.

“It is natural for a company or OEM to want to buy the cheapest product, but then, you know, the impact of them not supporting a domestic supply chain means that the domestic supply chain just never gets off the ground,” Moreno said.

He is working with the French chemical company Solvay to process the rare earths. “We are looking forward to keep moving forward with our strategic partnership with Solvay to start to supply all the OEMs, car manufacturers, you know, wind turbine manufacturers like Siemens Gamesa, for example, all that sort of stuff here in Europe,” Moreno said.