Khémisset, Morocco’s future capital of critical metals?

Key points:

• Morocco’s subsoil has not yet revealed all its secrets. In the coming years, new mining regions are expected to expand the range of critical minerals produced in Morocco.
• The Moroccan Sahara and the Khémisset region both show strong potential for this new dynamic, complementing the country’s historic mining areas.
• Khémisset, however, already has a head start, with deposits ready to move into production.
• Among its resources, tin ranks first. Its price currently stands at 54,000 dollars per tonne, compared with 35,000 dollars at the same time last year, an increase of more than 50% in one year.
• Several Moroccan and foreign companies are carrying out exploration work in the area, whose potential points to promising new discoveries, particularly around five critical substances: tin, antimony, lithium, potash and tungsten.

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In detail:

Moroccan mining companies benefited in 2025 from a particularly favorable market environment, marked by a sustained rise in the prices of several precious and critical metals. Far from being a simple upward cycle, this momentum is part of a long-term trend likely to continue over time.

Indeed, all projections point to the same conclusion. The global mining sector has reached a real point of no return, as supply will not be able to meet the growing demand for metals needed for the energy transition, at a time when most countries are accelerating efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In this context, although Morocco is not among the world’s major producers of critical metals, the Kingdom aims to become a regional hub for green industries — chemicals, batteries, electric vehicles and renewable energy — by leveraging the unprecedented diversity of its mining output, an asset few countries in the region can claim.

Better still, in the years ahead, the list of critical substances produced in Morocco is expected to expand gradually with nine new resources, at varying stages of development, namely tin, antimony, graphite, lithium, rare earths, silicon, potash, sulfur and titanium.

To turn this ambition into reality, several new mining regions are expected to emerge on the national map. Among them, the Khémisset region already stands out for the diversity of its critical metals, a portfolio whose richness and strategic importance are expected to grow in the coming years.

Khémisset, a mining identity reasserted

The Khémisset region certainly occupies an important place in national agriculture, but it also has genuine mining potential. Historically, this was driven by the El Hammam fluorite mine, operated by the Managem Group until 2021, when the depletion of its reserves led to its closure.

The end of operations at this single fluorite mine does not, however, mean the disappearance of the region’s mining vocation. On the contrary, several exploration projects point to promising potential, especially as the region borders the Tighza polymetallic mine, where lead, silver and zinc are notably extracted.

ONHYM is currently developing the Mejmaa Salihine prospect, which holds lithium potential. This area, already explored in the past, has revealed the presence of antimony and zinc. It is now undergoing an environmental impact assessment and is among ONHYM’s eighteen priority mining projects.

As with many other sites, investment by ONHYM, and previously by BRPM, has helped reduce the geological risk associated with several mining occurrences. The Zgounder silver mine is a prime example. Now operated by Aya Gold & Silver, it continues to generate a 3% royalty for ONHYM in return for its initial development work.

In the Khémisset region, ONHYM has thus helped de-risk several prospects, including the Rhouirat N’has mining area — antimony, copper and iron occurrences —, Sokhret Allal — tungsten —, the Khémisset potash deposits, as well as the Achmmach and El Karit tin mines.

Achmmach, a strategic opportunity in a tight market

In recent years, global tin demand has grown steadily, driven by its indispensable role in the production of printed circuit boards and semiconductors, a sector now central to the strategic rivalry between China and the United States.

The massive rollout of 5G coverage worldwide has amplified this dynamic, while recent innovations in next-generation batteries point to a further expansion of end uses.

This pressure on demand has translated into a surge in prices. Tin currently trades at around 54,000 dollars per tonne, compared with approximately 35,000 dollars a year earlier, representing an increase of about 54% over twelve months.

Beyond its applications in industrial chemicals and high technologies, tin faces a major supply vulnerability because global production is heavily concentrated in Asia, particularly in China, Indonesia and Myanmar. This geographical concentration makes it a critical metal, exposed to geopolitical tensions and supply-chain disruptions.

Through the Khémisset region, Morocco has productive potential that could open the way to strategic tin output. The Achmmach mine, by the scale of its reserves, ranks among the five major tin mines in the world according to international classification standards.

The Achmmach mine was taken over by the Chinese mining group Xingye, a specialist in non-ferrous metals, after the former operator Atlantic Tin failed to move past the construction stage. This difficulty had raised several questions about the project’s economic viability.

However, as defined by the technical studies, the project provides for the construction of an underground mine with a production cost estimated at 15,368 dollars per tonne of tin, a level that remains high and whose viability depends on very elevated tin prices.

In its 2026 objectives, Xingye explicitly lists Achmmach among its priority projects, committing to ensure its completion and commissioning within the required timeframe in order to unlock its capacity benefits. Eventually, Achmmach will become the largest tin operation in the group’s portfolio.

The project holds operating licences valid until 2032, while the development plan provides for a construction period of around eighteen months from the final investment decision.

Beyond the Achmmach underground mine itself, Atlantic Tin’s acquisition of the neighboring El Hammam mine opens up a complementary, lower-cost route. Open-pit mining, inherently less capital-intensive than underground mining, is made even more attractive by the possibility of reusing the existing processing plant at the former El Hammam mine, which would significantly reduce initial investment costs.

The region’s tin potential is not limited to the Achmmach deposit. Other deposits contain exploitable resources, admittedly more modest in volume, but consistent in quality.

Above all, the multitude of mineralized occurrences identified in the area suggests that advances in exploration techniques could, over the medium term, reveal new exploitable projects, strengthening Khémisset’s ambition to become a continental tin hub.

Antimony: a constellation of promising projects around Khémisset

Antimony, another metal used in semiconductor production, is also present in the Khémisset region.

Unlike tin, antimony has a history of production in the area. Long confined to cosmetic use as eye makeup and traded below 5,000 dollars per tonne, its price crossed the unprecedented threshold of 60,000 dollars per tonne in 2025, a twelvefold increase.

In Khémisset, the potential identified so far does not take the form of a world-class deposit, but rather of a constellation of modest mines capable of benefiting from current market conditions.

It is in this context that the joint venture between Wildstone and Xtract Resources is developing a small-scale mining project between Khémisset and Meknès. The company plans to commission a processing plant capable of delivering a finished product directly usable by downstream industries.

This momentum reflects a regional mining potential that goes beyond the local level and is asserting itself, nationally, as one of the future drivers of production for a metal classified as strategic by most major powers, including China, Japan and the United States.