Millennial Potash is considering starting its Banio potash project on Gabon’s southern coast at a larger scale than planned. Chair Farhad Abasov told Reuters the company is assessing an initial rate of 1 million to 1.2 million tonnes a year, against the 800,000 tonne a year base case in the definitive feasibility study now underway, in response to interest from prospective offtake customers and financiers in the United States, Brazil, Asia and Africa. Initial capital expenditure is estimated at about US$480 million.
The study itself carries United States government backing: the US International Development Finance Corporation has committed US$3 million toward the definitive feasibility study, which the company expects to complete by the end of 2026. Millennial is targeting financial close in August or September 2027, which would support construction beginning in late 2027 or early 2028, and is assembling a financing package involving the DFC and other backers. Of the sequence, Abasov’s logic is the standard project finance one: bankable offtake contracts give lenders confidence in future cash flows, and a larger plant spreads fixed costs over more tonnes if those contracts materialise.
Permitting sits in the middle of that timeline. Before construction, Millennial must convert its exploration licence into a mining permit; it expects to begin the conversion process in the first quarter of 2027, with approval potentially taking three to six months. The project uses solution mining, and the feasibility work is evaluating the base production case as well as significantly larger rates.
The honest framing is that Banio today is a roadmap of conditions, not a construction schedule. Every dated milestone, study completion by end 2026, licence application in early 2027, financial close in the third quarter of 2027, depends on the previous one holding. What changed this week is narrower and real: the sponsor is now publicly sizing the start up case at up to 50 percent above the base case because buyer interest is running ahead of the study, which is the first evidence that the offtake leg of the financing may be the easiest of the three to close.