$400m Nasarawa project to drive Nigeria’s critical mineral pivot

…As FG hails firm for environmental friendly measures

Nigeria is on track to position itself as Africa’s primary hub for critical mineral refining, following a federal regulatory assessment of an ongoing $400 million rare earth processing plant in Uke, Nasarawa State.

The facility, under development by indigenous firm Hasetins Commodities Limited, is projected to inject an additional 12,000 tonnes per annum (tpa) into the market. Upon full commissioning, the project will scale the company’s total output to 18,000 tpa, a volume expected to place Nigeria ahead of regional peers in the global green energy supply chain.

Ganiyu Imam, Director of the Mining Inspectorate, and Oladehinde Oladusi, a Deputy Director representing the Mines Environmental Compliance department, led a joint delegation from the Federal Ministry of Solid Minerals Development (MSMD) to inspect the site and audit the project’s regulatory alignment and infrastructural milestones.

Imam stated that the capital expenditure comes amid a broader policy push by the federal government to overhaul Nigeria’s solid minerals sector by disincentivizing raw ore exports in favor of domestic value addition.

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He noted that the facility’s baseline infrastructure complies with standard operational benchmarks, representing a structural break from historical patterns of raw mineral extraction and subsequent capital flight.

The delegation stated during the review that the framework observed on-site marks a departure from traditional extractive narratives where operators exploit resources without establishing local processing benchmarks.

He noted that the developers have secured critical prerequisites, notably a comprehensive Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA), which is standard for capital-intensive industrial deployments of this scale. Consequently, regulators have advised the project operators to maintain these risk-mitigation frameworks and systematically execute the environmental safeguards detailed in their statutory compliance documentation as construction advances toward commercial operations.

As international technology and energy markets tighten Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) compliance requirements, the Nasarawa facility is anchoring its processing architecture on sustainable engineering.

The plant utilizes a closed-loop processing model, a system designed to minimize atmospheric emissions, manage industrial tailings, and mitigate the risk of effluent leaching into local aquifers.

Prince Jidayi, Managing Director and CEO of Hasetins Commodities Limited, emphasized that domestic refining is central to retaining the economic value of the energy transition within the host country.

Jidayi noted that for decades, sub-sector margins have been limited by raw extraction and immediate export, but this facility is engineered to process rare earth elements alongside critical technology metals such as Tantalum, Tungsten, and Tin, ensuring that processing throughput aligns with ecological asset protection.

To secure the feedstock required for the target 18,000 tpa capacity, the investment architecture extends beyond the central hub in Uke to include a network of regional and satellite separation centres.

This distributed model aims to formalize the activities of artisanal and small-scale miners (ASMs), a demographic that has traditionally operated outside formal regulatory and banking structures.

By absorbing ASMs into a structured supply chain through safety gear provisioning, technical training, and institutional off-take agreements, the framework seeks to stabilize rural mineral economies while derisking the plant’s upstream supply.

To insulate operations from future friction, federal regulators have directed management to finalize and execute comprehensive Community Development Agreements (CDAs) prior to full commissioning, ensuring long-term stakeholder alignment and asset security.