Rio Tinto plans to re-engage with communities at its Jadar lithium project in Serbia after a municipality in the country scrapped a plan to allocate land for the mine, the quoting the CEO of Rio鈥檚 Serbian arm.
The聽miner wants to develop the mine near Loznica in the western Jadar river valley, one of Serbia鈥檚 main agricultural hubs, responsible for around a fifth of total agricultural production.
Jadar is set to ~58,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate by 2029, which would make Rio Tinto one of the top 10 lithium producers in the world.
Last week, however, Loznica鈥檚 municipal assembly scrapped a plan which would allocate land for the project.
Beta鈥檚 report quoted Vesna Prodanovic as saying Rio plans to engage in a public dialogue about the project, which has stirred protests by environmental groups.
Related: The world wants more lithium but doesn鈥檛 want more mines
鈥淲e want to call for a public dialogue, to acquaint residents with all aspects of our project,鈥� Beta quoted Prodanovic, CEO of Rio Sava Exploration.
Prodanovic said Rio also plans to 鈥渞econsider and possibly improve鈥� technical solutions it wants to use for the mine.
In recent weeks, green groups have staged protests and blocked roads across the country, demanding authorities end the project, causing a political headache for the ruling coalition loyal to President Aleksandar Vucic ahead of April elections.
鈥淭he entire Jadar project is just another way for multinational companies, with the help of our state, to make profit and cause damage to the people of Serbia,鈥� said Slavisa Miletic, an activist living near the planned mine.
鈥淚t is extremely difficult in such an intense anti-mining聽and negative campaign to have a reasonable debate on any topic,鈥� Prodanovic
Prices for lithium, the building block of electric-vehicle batteries, shot to a record this year, amplifying concerns there won鈥檛 be enough of the metal to fuel the switch away from combustion engines.
The opposition Rio faces is replicating around the world, and industry executives consider it their biggest challenge going forward. Southern Copper Corp. is struggling to get government support for its controversial $1.4 billion Tia Maria project in Peru, and Lithium Americas Corp. was taken to US federal court over its planned mine in Nevada.听
(With files from Reuters and Bloomberg)