The only zinc-manganese critical minerals project in the US approved, marking further progress in domestic mineral independence.

According to overseas mining media and official U.S. federal announcements, the Hermosa comprehensive zinc, silver, and manganese mining project in southern Arizona, owned by Australian mining company South32, has officially received the final permit from the U.S. Forest Service. This completes the entire environmental assessment process for public land development, making it a landmark project for the Trump administration's acceleration of domestic critical mineral production capacity.

The U.S. Forest Service released a Record of Decision for the Hermosa project on Tuesday local time. This document marks the comprehensive conclusion of all required environmental review processes for the project's occupation of state-owned forest land and the construction of supporting infrastructure, including mine roads, concentrator plants, and tailings storage facilities. It clears the most core federal-level land-use barriers for the project's implementation. For a long time, the construction of new large and medium-sized mines in the U.S. has required completing lengthy forest environmental impact assessments, ecological impact evaluations, consultations with indigenous peoples, and reviews of wildlife protection plans, with many projects stalled for years in the approval process. The fact that Hermosa completed the process so quickly highlights the current administration's policy orientation of accelerating mineral development.

The project possesses unique strategic value, being the only large underground mine under construction in the U.S. capable of simultaneously mining two federally designated critical minerals—zinc and manganese—while also being associated with high-value silver resources. The total investment for the project reaches $2.16 billion, with total resources of approximately 153 million tons, and a planned mining cycle of up to 20 years. The mine is equipped with a battery-grade manganese deep processing production line; upon completion, it will fill the gap in large-scale battery-grade manganese production in the U.S., altering the current supply chain shortcoming of relying entirely on overseas imports for manganese raw materials. Zinc and manganese are widely used in high-end industrial fields such as power batteries, wind power equipment, military alloys, power grid infrastructure, and electronic manufacturing, and are essential raw materials for the U.S. energy transition and defense industry.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins spoke publicly regarding this approval, highly affirming the strategic significance of the Hermosa project. She stated that the Hermosa critical minerals project fully demonstrates that expanding domestic mineral production capacity can effectively reduce U.S. reliance on overseas mineral supply channels that are volatile and carry high geopolitical risks. It stabilizes the supply of core raw materials needed for power batteries, advanced manufacturing, and large-scale infrastructure, consolidating the underlying resource security for national industry and energy transition.

To advance the implementation of this project, the U.S. Department of Defense previously provided $20 million in special support funds to the Hermosa project through a Defense Production Act program to accelerate the construction progress of the battery-grade manganese production line, achieving ore production two years ahead of the original schedule. The Department of Energy has introduced supporting large subsidies to support low-carbon mining and the research and development of mineral deep processing technologies, aiming to create a benchmark low-carbon modern mine. On the corporate side, South32 has built a dedicated remote intelligent operations center for Hermosa in Arizona, relying on automation and low-disturbance mining technologies to reduce the impact of forest land development on the local ecology, and is equipped with complete mine site soil restoration and water resource recycling plans to meet federal forest land ecological control requirements.

Looking at the broader policy background, after taking office, the Trump administration listed critical mineral supply chain security as a core national policy. It issued executive orders to compress mine environmental assessment cycles, established a multi-billion-dollar credit subsidy fund, and accelerated the approval of a batch of strategic mineral projects for copper, manganese, zinc, lithium, and others, with the goal of reducing overseas resource imports and building an independent and controllable domestic mineral system. The approval of the Hermosa project is an important outcome of this policy implementation, and it may subsequently drive the accelerated construction of a batch of metal mines in Arizona, reshaping the North American zinc and manganese supply landscape.