Red Metal says it has produced a marketable, world-class rare earth product following its first attempt to remove impurities from ore at its world-unique Sybella rare earth project near Mount Isa in Queensland.
The company says its low-impurity product, consisting primarily of magnetic rare earth oxides (MREO) – considered critical in the lucrative electric vehicle (EV) market – is another proof-of-concept step in Sybella’s journey to becoming a significant, low-cost rare earth mining company.
The Sybella deposit is a 12km long and 3km wide new style granite deposit located just 20km south west of Mount Isa. The Company believes it may be the first deposit of its type in the world and has many advantageous characteristics including soft, freely mineable ore that is easily processed at low temperatures, likely resulting in a low capital cost operation.
As part of its unique “metallurgy first” strategy, Red Metal described the successful removal of impurities in its first attempt to produce a saleable mixed rare earth carbonate (MREC) as a “major step forward” at Sybella.
The MREC is comprised of 48.7 percent rare earth oxides (TREO), with MREO accounting for 39.5 percent of TREO. The company believes that heavy rare earth oxides (HREO), which account for 26.6 percent of TREO, will help it command a premium price for its products.
The MREC product was produced using low-cost and readily available alkali reagents and, according to management, has all the essential indicators of a low-cost premium product that could even outperform products from profitable ionic clay deposits.
From ore to finished product, Red Metal reported high recovery rates of 75 percent neodymium and 76 percent praseodymium – important elements in permanent magnets for wind turbines and electric vehicles. The company also confirmed recovery rates of 52 percent and 45 percent, respectively, for terbium and dysprosium, which are considered critical for the production of electric vehicles.
Only small amounts of uranium, thorium and iron were found in the MREC product.
The removal of impurities and precipitation of a saleable product with minimal REO loss is a key hurdle that must be overcome for both the granite-hosted Sybella deposits and the ionic clay-hosted deposit types. Therefore, the success of our first impurity removal attempt is an important step forward for the Sybella REO discovery as it demonstrates that the essential indicators are in place to produce a high quality MREC product in a cost effective manner.
The company is now confident that the ongoing optimization studies will lead to increased sales by specifically reducing the consumption of expensive acids and ensuring that impurities in the final product remain low.
Reducing the acid strength to a more cost-effective acid with a pH of 3–3.5 is also intended to improve subsequent impurity removal, as aluminum and iron typically precipitate at these lower strengths without losing the important rare earth oxides.
Red Metal began drilling for resources after metallurgical testing confirmed high levels of rare earth recovery using low-cost methods. This is a bold but sound strategy, as it has been common in the past to spend millions of dollars on resource drilling only to later find that rare earth extraction is not economical.
The Company recently completed over 8,000 metres of step-out drilling over a 24 km² area of mineralised granite and is awaiting assay results from the laboratory.
Red Metal also owns a 44 percent interest in its “spin-off” former lead-silver project, now operated by Maronan Metals. Maronan has two 30 million tonne ore bodies that represent one of Australia’s largest and highest quality undeveloped silver resources. The price of silver has risen by almost 50 percent in the last six months.
A world-class MREC product is an important next step in the Company’s proof of concept at Sybella and continues to underscore management’s strategy of prioritizing metallurgy as the project evolves from a mere idea to a potential game-changer in rare earth mining.
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