Brazil FINEP opens BRL 215.2m 'Mais Inovação Brasil – Transformação Mineral' grant call for critical-minerals and urban-mining innovation

Severity

Rated 2 (not 1) on the disclosed BRL 215.2 million (~USD 40.8 million) subsidy pool — the same order of magnitude as the parallel BRL 300 million FINEP "Rodada 2" calls for defence and agro-industrial chains (also severity 2) filed the same day, and well above single-beneficiary FINEP grants such as the BRL 90 million Eve Air Mobility award (severity 1). This is an open, multi-company, multi-technology-line call rather than a single recipient, which keeps it at the low end of the severity-2 band.

Mechanism

FINEP runs "Mais Inovação Brasil" as a standing series of sector-specific subsidy rounds funded through the FNDCT (Fundo Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico) under MCTI (Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação). This call — Transformação Mineral — targets companies developing innovative, technologically risky products, processes or services in mineral value chains, mandatorily in partnership with an ICT. The stated policy goal is to deepen Brazil's mineral-transformation chains with a focus on critical and strategic minerals, supporting a secure and sustainable decarbonization and energy transition. Funding is non-repayable economic subsidy (subvenção econômica), not a loan, submitted through the Finep Financing and Support Platform; enquiries route through cp_transformacao_mineral@finep.gov.br. The call is open nationwide ("Todo Brasil").

Downstream implications

• Adds to Brazil's growing 2026-02-06 stack of parallel FINEP subsidy

rounds launched the same day (see also the BRL 500 million energy- transition round, the BRL 300 million defense-industrial-base grant, and the BRL 300 million agro-industrial chains grant) — cumulative FNDCT exposure across simultaneous calls is larger than any single round suggests.

• Sits alongside Brazil's broader critical-minerals policy stack

(PLANGEO decennial mineral research plan, Portaria MME 120 strategic- minerals debentures) as a research-and-innovation-financing layer specifically targeting rare-earth magnets and urban mining/recycling of critical-mineral-bearing waste streams.

• Long, rolling application window (extended through 2026-09-04) means

actual disbursements and beneficiary companies will only become visible well after this filing; no company_refs yet exist.

Open questions

• Which companies/consortia are ultimately awarded funding under this

round, and in what amounts, once the window closes or the budget is exhausted.

• How the budget splits across the five thematic lines, and whether

the rare-earth-magnets and urban-mining lines (higher-TRL, closer-to-market per secondary reporting) draw disproportionately relative to the more upstream critical-minerals-exploration line.