Malmbjerg molybdenum mine funding: process testwork insights for project engineers
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan

First reported on MINING.com
30 Second Briefing
Canada has committed C$7 million through Natural Resources Canada’s Critical Minerals Research, Development and Demonstration programme to Greenland Resources’ open-pit Malmbjerg molybdenum project in east Greenland, the first G7 investment in Greenland mining. The funding supports metallurgical work to test flotation of primary molybdenum using both saline and fresh water and to assess recovery of magnesium and rare earth elements from the orebody and process water, with the programme running to March 2028. Malmbjerg, 20 km from Mestersvig airport, is designed to produce 32.8 million lb/y of molybdenum metal for 10 years within a 20-year mine life, backed by a long-term offtake with Outokumpu.
Technical Brief
- Metallurgical testwork will explicitly compare flotation performance under saline versus fresh water process regimes.
- Canadian technical teams will assess by-product recovery potential for magnesium and rare earth elements from ore and saline water.
- Research activities fall under Natural Resources Canada’s Critical Minerals Research, Development and Demonstration programme framework.
- Findings could feed directly into Malmbjerg plant design choices on water management, reagent schemes and by-product circuits.
- Scope is limited to metallurgical feasibility and by-product potential; no geotechnical, hydrological or mine design work is referenced.
Our Take
Natural Resources Canada appears repeatedly in our database backing critical-mineral projects (gallium with Rio Tinto in Quebec and cobalt–gold with Fortune Minerals in NWT), so its support for Greenland Resources’ Malmbjerg molybdenum project fits a pattern of using federal funds to de-risk upstream supply for allied markets rather than purely domestic use.
The Malmbjerg project’s location in east Greenland’s Semersooq region, combined with Greenland Resources’ 1,147.76 km² special exploration licence reported in February 2026, suggests the company is positioning this molybdenum–magnesium district as a long-life cluster asset rather than a single-mine play, which could matter for future EU offtakers like Outokumpu looking for multi-decade security.
With China accounting for about 40% of global molybdenum output and Malmbjerg forecast to cover roughly 25% of EU consumption in its first decade, this Canadian-backed Greenland project effectively functions as a geopolitical diversification tool for European stainless-steel supply chains already linked to Greenland Resources through Outokumpu in our coverage.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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