Atlantis Ltd pulled out its bauxite mining project from Central Highlands due to lengthy approval time

Atlantic Ltd., an Australian mining company, finally exited the Vietnamese market after discovering there highly complicated and time consuming approval process having waited two years researching and awaiting the green signal from the government.

They had planned to develop an aluminium supply chain project in the Central Highlands and had worked in close collaboration with the Vietnam’s National Institute of Mining-Metallurgy Science and Technology since 2012. They conducted a development study to initiate a collaborative bauxite mine-rail-port project in the Central Highlands of Vietnam.

Atlantic completed the study and submitted it to the government in January last year in the hope that the project would be approved soon, they announced late last year. However no such approval has yet been received, as a result the project is stagnated at the initial planning stage.

Atlantic Ltd. has announced their quarterly report two weeks ago along with their decision to finally leave stating they had, “completed the process of closing its Vietnam operations.”

State owned Vietnam Natural Resources and Environment Corporation (T-MV) and Atlantic had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for this major three-pronged project. Atlantic believed the scope of the project was very good considering the increasing demand of bauxite in the region. They even had plans to add downstream alumina and aluminium processing in due course.

They would have also invested in two Highlands as well as build two processing plants in Central Highlands along with two processing plants in the area. The total investment was estimated to be around $1 billion.