SteadRight Critical Minerals (CSE: SCM) has been granted a mining licence for its TitanBeach Titanium Beach One project, moving the heavy mineral sands property in southwest Morocco past the exploration stage.
The licence was issued by Moroccan authorities to NSM Capital Sarl, the local operating company in which SteadRight holds a 76.5% interest. It covers roughly four kilometres by four kilometres, about 16 square kilometres, carved out of a much larger claim package along the country’s Atlantic coast.
“The granting of this approval marks a historic milestone for NSM Capital,” said Dipl.-Ing. L. Jouak, chief executive of NSM Capital Sarl, who described the permit as a significant first for Morocco.
SteadRight chief executive Matt Lewis called the approval “an extremely significant milestone,” and thanked Moroccan leadership and local officials for their support through the review process.
TitanBeach is not a conventional hard rock mine. The project targets iron-titanium sands on the beaches between Tan-Tan and Tarfaya, where the company is chasing titanium dioxide, which is a material used across aerospace, defense and medical manufacturing, and one with a notably short list of suppliers.
Surface sampling has returned an average of 9.0% titanium dioxide with a high of 14.94%, alongside average iron oxide grades of 48.6%. An initial NI 43-101 technical report on Beach One was filed in January.
The mining plan is modest in scale by design. Material is to be lifted with loaders and mini-excavators, then upgraded through gravity and magnetic separation into rutile and ilmenite concentrate for export through the port of Agadir.
Founded in 2019, SteadRight holds more than 192 square kilometres of mineral exploration claims in Morocco through NSM, spanning TitanBeach and the Copper Valley project among others. The company also has a binding memorandum of understanding covering the historic Goundafa mine, which already carries a permitted mining licence.
Steadright Critical Minerals last traded at $0.105 on the CSE.
