Solvay and Viridis Sign Binding Rare Earth Offtake Deal

Solvay and Viridis Mining and Minerals have signed a binding long-term rare earth offtake agreement that sends mixed rare earth carbonate from Viridis’s Colossus project in Brazil to Solvay’s separation works in La Rochelle, France, with first production targeted for 2028, Solvay said on 4 November and Viridis detailed in an ASX release on 5 November 2026.

The buyer on the contract is Rhodia Operations SAS, a Solvay group company. The initial term runs from first production through 31 December 2034, with a further five-year renewal contemplated. Binding take-or-pay obligations start on the earlier of commercial operations date or 1 January 2029. Pricing formulas and commercially sensitive parameters are not disclosed. Viridis still presents debt financing and final investment decisions as work in progress, not closed.

Volumes, floors and what US$915m does — and does not — mean

Viridis said minimum MREC volumes cover about 70% of Colossus’s forecast MREC production across the initial term, with Solvay holding a right of first offer on remaining planned output through end-2034 based on the DFS production target. Payable elements in the MREC basket are neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, terbium, samarium, yttrium and gadolinium.

For the magnetic quartet Nd, Pr, Dy and Tb, Viridis said minimum contracted volumes over the 2029–2034 take-or-pay window represent about 64% of forecast production of those elements. Multiplying those minima by contractual price floors (net of payability factors) underpins “minimum revenue of approximately US$915 million,” Viridis wrote, “subject to Viridis delivering the contracted volumes.” Samarium, yttrium and gadolinium are excluded from that calculation because no price floors apply to them. Additional upside could come from volumes above minima and market-linked pricing above floors — none of which is guaranteed in the announcement.

Solvay’s release stresses La Rochelle’s role as a large rare-earth separation site outside China and a separately contemplated licensing and technical services deal under which Solvay would help Viridis produce a higher-value refined carbonate in Brazil. That LTSA is described as contemplated, not as the binding offtake itself.

Western separation capacity is the scarce piece

Offtake stories usually fail when the mine has ore and no separator. Solvay is selling the opposite scarcity: industrial-scale separation plus a route into magnet and electronics customers. That is why the deal sits beside other Western rare-earth moves TSN has covered — Arafura’s Nolans ground-breaking in Australia’s Northern Territory, ITRI’s planned 500-tonne rare-earth plant in Taiwan, and the still-fragile EU–China export-licence understanding. Colossus-to-La Rochelle is another attempt to hard-wire non-Chinese feedstock into a European separator before 2030 demand rhetoric hardens into allocation fights.

Stéphane Diaz, Solvay’s rare earths general manager, said the agreement combines Viridis’s Brazilian resource with Solvay’s processing technology and La Rochelle’s industrial scale. Rafael Moreno, Viridis’s managing director and CEO, called the binding offtake a milestone that supports finalising project financing toward 2028 production and bringing advanced processing technology into Brazil.

Binding paper is not the same as poured concrete

For UK and EU industrial buyers, the relevant claim is feedstock diversification into La Rochelle, not a new UK mine. The commercial caveats are sharper than the headline. Debt is not final. Exact prices are secret. The US$915 million figure is Viridis’s own floor-times-volume arithmetic on four elements, contingent on delivery. Treat it as a company illustration of downside protection under the floors, not as booked revenue.

What to watch next is whether Viridis announces closed senior debt and FID, whether the contemplated LTSA is signed, and whether Solvay names magnet-chain customers tied to Colossus tonnes. Until then, the confirmed rare earth offtake fact is the binding Solvay–Viridis contract path from Brazil to France on the published term sheet — with financing, pricing detail and the US$915 million illustration still sitting where the companies left them: conditional, partial and forward-looking. Treat the offtake as real commercial paper; treat the revenue floor and the build schedule as claims that still need capital and tonnes to prove out.

Sources

• Solvay and Viridis sign long-term agreement for rare earth materials supply (Solvay, 4 November 2026)
• Viridis Secures Binding Offtake Agreement with Solvay (ASX release via MiningHub PDF, 5 November 2026)

Related stories

• Arafura Breaks Ground at Its Nolans Rare Earths Project in Northern Territory, Australia
• Taiwan’s ITRI Plans 500-Tonne Rare-Earth Plant to Meet Half of Demand
• EU and China Say They Will Ease Rare-Earth Export Licences