Victory Metals Limited has announced exceptional metallurgical leaching test results from its flotation concentrate at its wholly-owned North Stanmore heavy rare earth project in Western Australia.
Test work on concentrate produced from the company’s recent flotation program revealed a 48-fold upgrade of the total rare earth oxide it processed, rejecting about 95% of the feed mass into tailings.
The results also reflected extraction exceeding 70% of the critical heavy rare earths Dysprosium, Terbium and Yttrium.
“These results represent a significant technical and economic breakthrough,” the miner said. It added that the process sets Victory apart from peers that have reported flotation results and require high-temperature acid cracking (about 400–500°C) with very high sulphuric acid consumption (about 1,500 kg/t of concentrate).
The results were obtained without the traditional acid-cracking process, avoiding an estimated $1 billion in associated capital expenditure based on the CAPEX requirements of its recent peers.
Victory said it plans on selling its heavy rare earth concentrate into the global market, resulting in a faster and simpler path to market, lower CAPEX and OPEX, and a unique heavy rare earth enriched concentrate with negligible amounts of deleterious elements.
Combined with recent flotation work, the flowsheet enables small-scale, low-capex hydrometallurgical circuits that Victory proposes will be operated by third-party off-takers.
“These outstanding test results highlight that the concentrate at North Stanmore is truly something special. There is nothing like it in the Western world, and we expect high demand as a result. The fact we can separate out the valuable elements without high temperatures and high acid consumption puts us at a significant advantage to peers. Our product can be shipped as general cargo with significant ratios of the rare earths that matter and that the Western world needs: Dysprosium, Terbium and Yttrium,” said Victory Metals CEO and Executive Director Brendan Clark.
North Standmore is located at Cue in WA. The tenement package totals over 16,500 hectares with an additional 12,500 ha of tenure applications. Victory has now proven its ability to produce all seven rare earth elements currently under Chinese export restrictions – Dysprosium, Terbium, Yttrium, Scandium, Samarium, Gadolinium and Lutetium – making it one of the few Western-aligned sources of these defense-critical materials.