A Brazilian federal judge has suspended environmental licences and mining permits for Sigma Lithium’s Grota do Cirilo mine in Minas Gerais, halting output at the company’s only productive asset.
The ruling, made on Friday in a civil suit brought by the Federation of Quilombola Communities of Minas Gerais, concerns consultation rights claimed by the Baú Quilombola Community. The federation said Sigma’s project lay within the community’s direct area of influence and had proceeded without the required consultation and impact assessments.
Judge Antonio Lucio Tulio de Oliveira Barbosa found sufficient evidence that the Baú territory fell within the project’s area of influence. Studies cited in the decision put the territory about 2.7 km (1.7 miles) from the mine’s directly affected area, a distance within the 8 km threshold that requires a more extensive consultation process for projects near Quilombola territories.
The judge said the community faced a risk of harm because Sigma’s mining complex conducted 'constant blasting and earthmoving activities just a few kilometres from the traditional territory'. The court ordered an independent georeferencing expert review to establish the exact distance between the project and the Quilombola territory.
The order prevents Minas Gerais state from granting Sigma new environmental licences. It also sets a fine if the company continues operating, though the amount was not specified. Active mining is halted until a community-impact study is completed.
Grota do Cirilo, near Araçuaí and Itinga in Minas Gerais, has a nameplate capacity of 330,000 tons of lithium oxide concentrate on an annualised basis. The project is considered one of Brazil’s most relevant lithium deposits, and it is Sigma’s sole productive asset.
The federal order also suspends an agreement signed by Minas Gerais’s government and Sigma in August, which had allowed mining to resume after state inspectors embargoed the mine in July over separate violations. Friday’s decision concerns one Afro-Brazilian community’s consultation rights rather than the mine’s wider environmental safety record.
The case centres on the legal significance of the mine’s proximity to the Baú Quilombola Community. Quilombola communities are Afro-Brazilian traditional communities with protected status. The ordered review is intended to settle the distance question that underpins the consultation requirements in dispute.
It remains unclear whether the suspension will last only while the required study and formal consultations are completed or whether it will have a longer effect on the project.
Sigma Lithium has successfully overturned similar Brazilian court rulings earlier this year. For now, however, the suspension stops production at Grota do Cirilo and blocks the state from issuing the company further environmental permits.
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