Mount Ridley Mines squeezes out record scandium recovery with half the juice
Mount Ridley Mines (ASX: MRD) has delivered a powerful one-two punch from the latest round of metallurgical testwork using its proprietary “Selectro” leach process, achieving its highest-ever scandium and rare earth recoveries while simultaneously slashing its reagent use by half.
The third metallurgical tilt has returned a stellar 91.8 per cent scandium recovery from raw material at its Grass Patch project near Esperance, marking a significant jump from the previous 80 per cent recovery mark.
With the United States currently backing major Australian scandium projects and ongoing shortages continuing to affect aerospace and chip supply chains, Mount Ridley’s Selectro breakthrough is sure to turn heads.
The company says that the highly valuable heavy rare earth element (HREO) recoveries also climbed in the latest test, reaching up to 86 per cent and averaging 84 per cent, while light rare earth elements averaged 77 per cent recovery.
Crucially, the improved results were achieved using about half the reagent dose applied in the first two tests. The company says this points to a more efficient leach profile and a potential pathway to materially lower operating costs, with reagent costs often dominating producers’ economic profiles.
Mount Ridley has not yet established the lower limit of reagent concentration for the Selectro process, suggesting further improvements may still be possible at even lower doses.
Our wholly-owned and patent-pending Selectro process results continue to impress, with scandium recovery increasing to 91.8% and REE recoveries improving across the board, HREE averaging 84% and up to 86%. Importantly, these improvements were achieved while halving the reagent dose used in the previously reported Selectro Tests. Mount Ridley Mines Managing Director and CEO Allister Caird
Mount Ridley’s breakthroughs arrive hot on the heels of the company's recent listing on the US OTC market, a move designed to increase engagement from US institutional and strategic investors. With scandium, heavy rare earths and gallium all designated as critical minerals by the US Government, the timing of Selectro’s metallurgical success couldn't be better.
Additionally, the company’s capital-light strategy of re-assaying its extensive historical drilling database appears to be paying dividends. The approach has helped Mount Ridley recently lift its scandium inventory to a massive 946 million tonnes containing more than 47,000 tonnes of metal across 44.5 square kilometres. With mineralisation still open laterally and at depth, the company says the upgrade has handed it the global crown for the largest publicly reported JORC-compliant scandium resource.
Adding further weight to the critical minerals story, the project also hosts a 122.5Mt heavy rare earths resource grading 889ppm total rare earth oxides (TREO), containing 108,000t TREO, of which roughly 41 per cent is heavy rare earth oxides. Mount Ridley also boasts a whopping 838.7Mt gallium resource grading 29.3ppm gallium for 24,584 tonnes of the metal.
The company’s Selectro process is a wholly owned, patent-pending technology designed to operate as a closed-loop system at low temperatures and ambient pressure.
Armed with a growing body of encouraging metallurgical data, Mount Ridley is now incorporating the latest results into its process economics and scoping study assumptions.
Crucially, the results were generated from raw, unoptimised feed, suggesting the Selectro process still has plenty of room to evolve. If Mount Ridley can continue improving recoveries while driving down processing costs, the company may be well on its way to turning its globally significant scandium resource from a geological curiosity into a commercially viable critical minerals operation.
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