American Rare Earths boosts oxides 10x

American Rare Earths (ASX: ARR) now has 10 times the total rare earth oxides (TREO) concentration at its Halleck Creek project in Wyoming.

The TREO jumped to 3.72% from 0.34% in a metallurgical milestone, the company said Thursday. It highlighted that 93.5% of non-rare earth material can be removed during early-stage processing. This means that only 6.5% of the mined ore will require further refining, which reduces processing costs.

“These results confirm exactly what we anticipated — Halleck Creek ore can be efficiently upgraded using simple, low-cost conventional processing methods,” CEO Chris Gibbs said in a release. “With these results in hand, we will issue an updated scoping study shortly, incorporating the resource increase announced earlier this month.”

Flowsheet

The critical mineral-focused company noted that is advancing metallurgical test work to optimize processing efficiency and conducting hydrometallurgical testing to refine the flowsheet. 

The Halleck Creek project’s resource contains 2.63 billion tonnes at 3,292 parts per million total TREO and 7.48 million tonnes of contained TREO, including neodymium and praseodymium oxides. They’re used to make magnets for electric car motors. 

Shares in American Rare Earths fell 4.7% on Thursday, closing at A31¢. They fell another cent on Friday for a market capitalization of A$149.2 million ($135.2 million)