Northern Minerals thinks it can produce more rare earths from its Browns Range project by investing $4 million in ore sorting technology.
Rare earths — sometimes known as “magnet metals” — include minerals such as dysprosium, neodymium and praseodymium. They are lesser known compared to battery metals such as lithium and cobalt — but are attracting increased attention because of their use in electric car motors.
Northern Minerals (ASX:NTU) — Australia’s newest heavy rare earths producer — has investigated using ore sorting on the five stockpiles at Browns Range to improve “beneficiation” and feed to the processing facility.
Beneficiation is the process of removing gangue (or commercially valueless) minerals from good minerals to improve economic value.
The ore-sorting technology has already been tested on the Wolverine high-grade stockpile and Northern Minerals says it has demonstrated the potential to double the mill feed grade.
“Ore sorting technology is readily available through a number of providers and our studies on the five existing [run-of-mine] stockpiles have shown the potential for significant improvements in both processing plant efficiency and value recovery of heavy rare earth elements through its use,” managing director George Bauk said.
“We believe the up-front capital cost of retrospectively installing ore sorting technology ahead of the existing Brown Range pilot plant circuit is justified in light of the head grade improvement demonstrated in the testwork to date, along with the forecast economic benefits delivered by greater production output.”
Northern Minerals is currently working on more testwork, approvals, planning and the funding required for ore sorting at Browns Range.
The plan is to have ore sorting in place by the second quarter of 2019.
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