| Amazon's focus has shifted to the Cerrado Verde potash project in centra-eastern Brazil which Amazon announced in November 2008 as having staked. The current 118,742 hectare land position covers a 100 km by 6 km wide belt of "green slate" with a thickness ranging 20-40 metres in Minas Gerais State. The "Verdete Slate" is a combination of glauconite and sericite, silicates with a potash (K2O) content ranging 5%-14%. The material is friable and occurs as a near surface lithological unit that outcrops in places, and could conceivably be open pit mined. Its potential as a source of potash for the fertilizer industry had been investigated by Vale (then CVRD) and several universities during the eighties. One of the studies demonstrated that a "thermo-potash-lime" product suitable as a slow-release, non-chloride fertilizer could be created if the materials were heated in a kiln to 1,100 degrees celsius. The energy costs, however, prevented this product from competing with the more traditional KCl produced from evaporite beds which at the time had a price of less than $80 per tonne. CVRD found itself a more traditional potash deposit elsewhere in Brazil, and the Verdete Slate was forgotten. During the potash rush of the first half of 2008 one of Amazon's advisors, Ysao Munemassa, who had once worked for CVRD, remembered this story, investigated the land situation, and brought it to Amazon's attention. |
