June 2022 start for Vital Metals to produce mixed rare earth carbonates with feed from its own mines

2022-05-28 18:21:10 By : Ms. Mary Zheng

The rare earths sector has been doing very well lately, especially the highly valued magnet rare earths for which prices have doubled over the past year. Neodymium (Nd) and praseodymium (Pr) are the key magnet rare earths used commonly in electric motors. They also fall into the category of the ‘light rare earths’. Another group of rare earths, known as the ‘heavy rare earths‘, also have value. They include europium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, ytterbium, lutetium and yttrium . Dysprosium (Dy) in particular is very valuable and is critically necessary for and used in alloys for neodymium based magnets subject to high temperature swings in operation.

Today’s company is working towards becoming a North American producer of both light and heavy rare earths.

Vital Metals Limited (ASX: VML | OTCQB: VTMXF) (Vital) is a rare earths ore producer from their Nechalacho Rare Earths Mine in the Northwest Territories (NWT), Canada. Nechalacho has a measured, indicated and inferred resource of 94.7Mt at 1.46% REO for 1.3Mt contained TREO. The focus to date has been on the high-grade, light rare earths, found in the bastnaesite mineralization there.

Vital has off-take agreements with REEtec in Norway and with Ucore Rare Metals Inc. (TSXV: UCU | OTCQX: UURAF) in the USA. In both cases, Vital is working with them to develop a qualified feed stock for them end at commercial scale. In some good recent news, offtake buyer, REEtec,  signed a supply agreement with Germany’s large OEM automotive supplier,Schaeffler, thereby potentially securing Vital’s revenue from the sale of its product to REEtec.

Vital is currently constructing a Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, based cracking and leaching facility, with first feed to the facility expected in June 2022. An additional C$5 million of funding/reimbursement was recently achieved to help support the commissioning and ramp-up stage. Vital aims to produce a minimum of 5,000 tons annually of contained REO by 2025 at the Nechalacho Mine.

Vital Metals’ Managing Director Geoff Atkins stated: “With production forecast to commence in June 2022, this will make Vital North America’s only producer of high purity rare earth carbonate with feed from its own mines providing security of supply for the global rare earths supply chain.”

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Expansion into heavy rare earths

As announced on April 29, 2022, Vital is now planning to expand their existing light rare earths mine operation to also include heavy rare earths. Vital plans to investigate developing a zone of xenotime mineralization, the principle heavy rare earth hard-rock mineral, at Nechalacho’s North T pit, targeting a 10-year operation from the zone.  Xenotime,  is an yttrium phosphate mineral, and is the only known commercially feasible hard-rock source of dysprosium and terbium, which are the critical magnet rare earth additives for high temperature operations. As Vital stated: “Tardiff contains elevated heavy rare earths mineralization which may complement North T’s xenotime deposit as part of Vital’s strategy to produce heavy and light rare earths.”

In 2022, in addition to commencing production at the Saskatoon facility and working on expanding into heavy rare earths , Vital plans further drilling at the Tardiff zone to define a maiden Ore Reserve. 

Vital Metals 3 stage strategy to become a North American producer of both light & heavy rare earths

Source: Vital Metals March 2022 quarterly report

Vital Metals continues to march forward at a rapid pace. In late June 2021 the Nechalacho mine came into production, notably being Canada’s first-ever producing rare earths mine. Then only a year later in June 2022, the Saskatoon cracking and leaching facility’s first production of a mixed rare earth carbonate is set to commence.

If that wasn’t good enough the Company is now planning to also produce heavy rare earths, also from the Nechalacho Mine. Once achieved Vital announced that they would become the “the world’s first producer of both heavy and light rare earth oxides.”

Vital Metals trades on a market cap of A$204 million. Exciting times ahead.

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Very well done Matt. Thank you for the update. I remember visiting the Nechalacho project 6-7 years ago, and I would enjoy seeing some footage from the project.

Thanks for describing the Vital Metals picture (I hold and continue buying). One very interesting and contrasting situation between Vital (maybe Rainbow) and the other niche RE explorers is that they have not waited to get all their drilling, flow charts, etc., in place. Using a staged approach, they have started mining at the same time as expanding their feedstock project knowledge and progressing their Saskatchewan facility.

Hence, Vital has got a documented offtake with REEtec because they got themselves out there into the RE marketplace. This may have also impacted the further move made by Schaeffler, which will benefit Vital.

For me, Vital is a prime example of a RE company recognizing and competing for the poll positions in the N. American RE sector competition. Another RE CAD CEO has also used the term ‘race’ to describe the present RE entity situation.

Again, this is not the last decade. Assuming that both present strategic financing and private will last well into the 2020s, never mind beyond this decade, may be misplaced.

For RE investors the question is how many RE feedstock and/or processing entities’ will actually be needed in N. America? Already 3 strategically funded in the US and 1 in CAD. Informed RE investor investments now and in the near future could make for strong returns, just to 2024.

Welcome. Thanks for your comment.

Australia’s Linus Spent about $800 million to build a rare earth processing plant in Malaysia in 2008, but the Linus facility wasn’t built with the best technology. Linus failed to implement best practices in Malaysia; In terms of gas discharge, waste water discharge and temporary waste disposal, international standards are not followed. In addition, Linus has no specific waste disposal system, especially for radioactive waste disposal. In addition, Lynas did not provide enough information to conduct a detailed environmental impact assessment, so the plant’s full impact on the environment remains a mystery.

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