TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Brazil-focused DuSolo Fertilizers has received an operating licence for a part of its Bomfim project, in Brazil, allowing it to extract phosphate at the Santiago target.

The TSX-V-listed project developer on Thursday noted that Naturatins, or the Environmental Agency of Tocantins state, granted the licence, which would expire in August 2018.

With the licence in hand, DuSolo would be able to extract the high-grade phosphate discovered at the Santiago target to produce direct application natural fertiliser (DANF), which is in high demand among farmers and agricultural centres close to the Bomfim project.

"We are thrilled with this recent development as it moves us one step closer to an important corporate milestone. The company is now one permit [the mining permit] away from starting the extraction and processing of phosphate into fertilisers,” DuSolo president and CEO Eran Friedlander said.

Located in the heart of the massive agricultural Cerrado area of Brazil, Friedlander told Mining Weekly Online in a May interview that there was a critical demand for locally sourced fertilisers – be it potash or phosphates – in Brazil, highlighting the significant opportunity DuSolo and other development companies such as Verde Potash and MBAC Fertilizer were seizing.

DuSolo also planned to use a series of crushers, screens and mills to process a small portion of the high-grade phosphate discovered at the Santiago target into three DANF products of different phosphate grades (12%, 15%, 18% phosphorus pentoxide).

Unlike other phosphate-based fertiliser products, DANF processing is simple and apart from screen separation (a process that relies on physical attributes) does not entail flotation and/or further beneficiation. DANF is used alongside the standard and more costly nitrogen/phosphate/potash blend to compensate for elevated nutrient depletion as a result of heavy tropical rainfalls.

Farmers in the region have become accustomed to using DANF on their crops over the past several years but owing to recent restrictions in supply, were no longer able to source it locally.

DuSolo said as a result of its recent high-grade discovery, it intended to fill the current void in this rapidly expanding marketplace by providing farmers with a local alternative supply for years to come.