Arrow Minerals (ASX:AMD) lifts trading halt with fresh 3-year Niagara bauxite permit

Guinea’s decree removes the tenure overhang that has hung over the stock since May 2025

Arrow Minerals (ASX:AMD) has finally cleared the tenure cloud that has hung over its Niagara Bauxite Project in Guinea for more than a year. The Guinean government has awarded Arrow a brand new three-year Industrial Exploration Permit covering the same 499.61 square kilometres as the old Permit 22889, with identical beacon coordinates and full coverage of the mineralised plateaux hosting the maiden Mineral Resource.

This matters because Arrow’s shares were placed in trading halt back in May 2025 when Guinea’s government publicly named a long list of permits under review for potential cancellation. Niagara sat on that list. Today’s announcement lifts the halt and, critically, hands the company a full fresh term rather than a rescue or reinstatement of the old permit.

Renewal rights allow two further two-year extensions if needed. Arrow paid roughly US$14,000 in fees and taxes to secure the grant on 15 July 2026 and has committed to a minimum spend of US$1.51 million over three years, with fieldwork to begin within six months.

The permit was issued to Arrow’s wholly owned Guinean subsidiary Mineralfields Bauxite SARLU by Ministerial Decree, and the amended acquisition agreement for Niagara can now move to completion.

Why a fresh permit is stronger than a reinstated one

The bear read on Arrow through 2025 and into 2026 was simple. Sovereign risk in Guinea had teeth, and if Niagara’s permit was quietly cancelled the whole bauxite thesis collapsed.

The government instead ran what MD David Flanagan describes as a systematic review of Arrow’s historical work, capacity and capability under the Guinea Mining Code, and elected to issue a new tenement with a full three-year initial term. That is a materially different outcome to a mere reinstatement.

It signals the government sees Arrow as a legitimate developer rather than a permit-holder to be cleaned out. For a company that has spent over a year in regulatory limbo, that endorsement is worth more than the paperwork itself.

Simandou North is still the unresolved question

Investors should not read today’s news as a full clean-up of Arrow’s Guinea tenure. The company’s Simandou North iron ore permit was named in the same May 2025 media announcements as pending cancellation, and no formal communication has yet been received on its status.

Arrow says it remains actively engaged with the Ministry of Mines and Geology on Simandou North, but the outcome is still open. Our concern is that the market may treat today’s Niagara grant as blanket validation across both assets when the two files clearly sit on different tracks.

The skeptical read is that Guinea has picked a winner on the bauxite side while keeping the iron ore permit as leverage. That is the tenure question investors should be asking on the next call.

What Niagara actually is

Niagara sits in the same country that hosts some of the world’s most sought-after bauxite, the aluminium ore that feeds the smelting chain into aluminium metal. Arrow reported a maiden Mineral Resource for Niagara in March 2025, flagging premium direct shipping ore potential, meaning ore of high enough grade to ship without further processing.

The 499.61 square kilometre footprint is not small, and coverage of the mineralised plateaux is fully intact under the new permit. Arrow has already started planning further fieldwork, with the six-month expenditure clock now ticking.

The US$1.51 million minimum spend over three years is modest for an exploration project of this footprint. It leaves room for genuine resource growth work rather than just tenement-maintenance drilling.

The Investors Takeaway for Arrow Minerals

For the past 14 months Arrow has been priced for a binary outcome on Niagara. That binary has now resolved to the upside, and attention should shift from whether the permit survives to how quickly Arrow can convert the resource into a genuine development story.

We think the next three catalysts are clarity on Simandou North, completion of the amended Niagara acquisition, and the first fieldwork results under the new permit. Investors watching this name can also see our prior coverage at stocksdownunder for context on how this ASX-listed AMD trades on very different drivers to its far larger US-listed namesake.