According to official sources, Canada has some of the largest known reserves and resources (measured and indicated) of rare earths (REEs) in the world, estimated at over 14M tonnes of rare earth oxides in 2021.
However, the Canadian government also notes there is no current commercial producer of REEs.
The closest to achieving commercial rare earths production to date is Australia’s Vital Metals Limited (ASX: VML), which commenced trial operations in Saskatchewan in mid-2021.
Vital Metals recently achieved a key milestone in its plans to establish commercial rare earths production when it revealed that results from the first feed of the dense media separation (DMS) unit at its Saskatoon rare earths extraction facility in Saskatchewan.
According to Vital Metals, the results obtained were comparable to the total rare earth oxide (TREO) grade achieved from laboratory metallurgical testwork in its first run.
Results show the DMS plant sinks achieved comparable grades to those seen in testwork, with 43.7% TREO achieved from the DMS Cyclone at Saskatoon, compared with 44.6% TREO achieved in laboratory conditions at verification specialist SGS’s facilities.
The DMS unit also achieved 75.2% recovery in its first run for a single pass, processing ~2,300kg of concentrate mined at Vital’s Nechalacho rare earth project (North T zone) in the Northwest Territories, sorted onsite and then crushed at the Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC) facility adjacent to Vital’s Saskatoon plant.
Managing director, Geoff Atkins, said that with the concentrate grade reaching the target, the plant will now undergo some adjustments and ultimately further trials will be conducted to try and increase the recovery further, whilst maintaining the combined sinks concentrate grade >40% TREO.
“Our team has achieved outstanding results from the DMS unit during initial commissioning at Saskatoon and the fact that on the first run we hit the laboratory test grades for total rare earths with 75% recovery with low-grade feed material is above expectations,” Mr Atkins said.
“There will be work to do with optimizing our process over the coming months, but these initial results demonstrate incredible potential. It gives us a great level of confidence for future commissioning activities through the remaining process.”
Vital will use results from the DMS unit’s first run to finetune its Saskatoon operations. The company will then incrementally commission the remaining circuits of the process flow sheet over the coming months, with plans to produce a 2.5-tonne rare earth carbonate sample for offtake partner REEtec Ag as the next step of product qualification.
Vital’s Saskatoon plant will have initial throughput capacity of 1,000 tonnes/year of rare earth oxide (REO) excluding cerium, which is equivalent to ~470t NdPr/year, increasing to 2,000 tonnes/year REO excluding cerium, equivalent to 940t NdPr/year, in Stage 2.
In June 2021, Vital claimed the honour of becoming Canada’s first rare earths producer following commencement of trial production at Nechalacho rare earths project.
Another company progressing towards rare earths production is Canadian explorer and developer Imperial Mining Group Ltd (TSXV: IPG).
The company announced in mid-July it had achieved significantly improved scandium and rare earth recoveries results at its Crater Lake Development Project in Quebec. Recovery of the rare earths increased 10% from 84% to 94%.
“The much-improved recoveries reported from the current optimization work will significantly impact the financial model reported in our PEA announcement last month,” said president and CEO Peter Cashin.
“Even more encouraging is the fact that the recovery improvements were obtained from scale-up of our metallurgical process when compared to our initial lab-scale test results reported in 2020. We continue our optimization work further reduce the operating risk presented by our PEA last month.”
Imperial Mining work will be geared towards work required to move the Crater Lake scandium-rare earth project towards Definitive Feasibility Study activities. For this to be accomplished, a 2,500m in-fill diamond drill programme will be required for the current resource at the TG Zone Northern Lobe.
Exciting rare earths discovery
Toronto-headquartered Appia Rare Earths & Uranium Corp. (CSE: AP) has grabbed a number of headlines with its drilling successes in Saskatchewan.
In early June, the company made a significant rare earths discovery at Augier with its 2021 drilling programme in the WRCB area of the 100%-owned Alces Lake high-grade rare earth elements and gallium property, Athabasca Basin area, northern Saskatchewan.
“This could be a blockbuster for future rare earths production, as Appia continues to move the Alces Lake rare earths discovery towards potential development,” Appia president, Frederick Kozak, said. Follow up drilling at Augier has continued to highlight its potential.
In July Appia reported that a total of 24 holes drilled in 2022 on the Augier discovery had confirmed a thick zone of anomalous radioactivity in REE-bearing pegmatite.
While delineation drilling is continuing, Mr Kozak said the Augier discovery is a significant rare-earth-bearing zone within what appears to be a continuous kilometre-scale geological structure.
“It is massive – the radiometric anomaly is 300m in strike length and 175m wide. The mineralized interval is up to 70m in drilled width and has been intersected over 100m down dip. So far, the zone is open to the NNW, SSE and down-dip, it has no boundaries and it outcrops at surface.
“We eagerly await the assay results to determine just how big an REE discovery we have made.”
We eagerly await the assay results to determine just how big an REE discovery we have made
The Augier discovery was initially prospected in 2018 and was channel sampled in 2021. The 2021 assay results returned 7.0m of 0.57wt% TREO with intervals of 1.35 wt% TREO (0.59m) and 1.57 wt% TREO (0.40m).
The discovery is located approximately 1,500m directly southeast of the WRCB area, along a well-defined kilometres-scale structural corridor.
Hack attack
Canadian rare earths developments have attracted interest of another kind recently. Cybersecurity research company Mandiant has alleged that foreign agents have used social media to try and block the opening up of rare earth mining in the country.
According Mandiant, an influence campaign has allegedly had a particular focus on Canadian rare earths developments in recent years. Mandiant alleged that Appia and Vital Metals have been a focus of the campaigns that aim to denigrate the rare earths mining industry.
However, the cyber security specialists revealed that the activity detailed in its reports has not appeared to have been particularly effective and received only limited engagement by seemingly real individuals.
