Savannah Resources (AIM: SAV) has appointed Sedgman as the front-end engineering and design (FEED) contractor for the lithium concentrator at the Barroso project in northern Portugal, the company announced October 7. Sedgman, which developed the project’s process flowsheet and plant design for the Definitive Feasibility Study, won the role through a competitive process against multiple engineering firms. Over the next eight months it will lead the FEED program, focused on process design and procurement of 13 long-lead equipment packages that Savannah considers critical to holding the project schedule toward a final investment decision. Savannah will finance the equipment down payments from about US$53 million in cash and short-term treasury reserves.
The appointment follows Savannah’s July 2026 Phase 1 DFS, which models 183,000 tonnes a year of 5.5% Li2O spodumene concentrate over an initial 14-year life from a 20-million-tonne probable reserve grading 0.99% Li2O. At an average sales price of US$1,788 per tonne, the study reports US$3.2 billion in EBITDA, US$1.9 billion of free cash flow, an unlevered post-tax net present value of US$913 million and a post-tax internal rate of return of 43%, with payback in 1.9 years. Mining is planned as a conventional open-pit excavator-truck operation starting with the Pinheiro and Grandao pits, using dry-stacked tailings.
Alongside the FEED award, Barroso was certified compliant with the ISO 14001 environmental management standard after an independent Bureau Veritas audit, a milestone aimed at regulators, lenders and local stakeholders in a project that has faced sustained community opposition over land and water. Savannah is also hiring roughly 30 additional staff, expanding its team by about three-quarters as it moves toward construction.
Barroso holds Strategic Project status under the EU Critical Raw Materials Act and is routinely described as Europe’s largest spodumene lithium deposit, at a 39-million-tonne resource grading 1.05% Li2O across five orebodies. The FEED milestone unlocks long-lead procurement and the EPCM conditional grant; what blocks a final investment decision from here is project financing (the company raised about US$40 million recently and holds an investment contract for up to EUR 110 million in non-reimbursable state grant funding), outstanding offtake agreements and the still-unresolved local land opposition.