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neWs

Retirement on hold for

rare earths legend

he unprecedented opportunity to develop our initial test work at ANSTO give us confi-
Tthe first ionic clay-hosted rare earths mine dence that we will be able to be a producer
outside of China and Myanmar was all the of a rare earth concentrate which will be an
incentive industry stalwart Dudley Kingsnorth integral part of the supply chain that is inde-
needed to come out of semi-retirement. pendent of China.”
Professor Kingsnorth, a former project AREL is currently looking to recruit a
manager at Mt Weld who is considered one managing director who will be based out
of the world’s foremost rare earths experts, is of Adelaide and lead the company into the
chairing Australian Rare Earths Ltd (AREL) development phase at Koppamurra. In the
which debuted on the ASX on July 1 follow- meantime, the existing team is awaiting as-
ing an oversubscribed $12 million IPO. say results from the recent 79-push tube
Shares in AREL surged as high as $1 core hole drill programme over areas adja-
in the days following its listing as investors cent to the existing resources at Red Tail and
quickly warmed to the landmark opportunity Yellow Tail.
in front of the company via its Koppamurra Beyond the resource upgrade planned for
rare earths project on the border of South the next quarter, AREL is seeking to seam-
Australia and Victoria. lessly transition into study mode. Kingsnorth
Koppamurra hosts an inferred resource of said the company had already set a goal of
39.9mt @ 725 ppm TREO which the compa- developing the project for less than $US100
ny is planning to upgrade in Q4. The project’s million.
mineral assemblage contains a combination Dudley Kingsnorth The Koppamurra tenements are predomi-
of the lighter neodymium and praseodymium nantly located on the South Australian side of
as well as the heavy dysprosium and terbium his feet up after more than 50 years in the the border, although some of its 4,000sq km
rare earths which all go into the permanent industry, was then presented with an offer he ground holding does spill over into Victoria.
magnets needed for the motors powering could not refuse. Kingsnorth does not believe this will be an is-
electric and hybrid vehicles. “I saw it was a great opportunity to effec- sue for the company as it looks to progress
“We can supply people who will produce tively come out of retirement because there into development.
these permanent magnets with a complete are no ionic clay deposits outside of China “There is a focus nationally and in Victoria
suite of rare earths,” Kingsnorth told Paydirt. and Myanmar currently in production and as well to mine critical minerals and process
“The ionic clays that we have at Koppa- supplying these heavy rare earths,” King- them, and we believe that by the way we’re
murra are not exactly the same as those in snorth said. conducting our exploration and the way we’re
China, but they are sufficiently similar and “There’s no question that the results we’ve going forward, that would help facilitate us
the results we’ve been able to obtain so far had to date from our [hand auger] drilling and getting any approvals that we would require
from ANSTO have convinced us that we will in Victoria,” he said.
be able to recover a mixed rare earth con- “We’ve had a lot of encouragement from
centrate. the South Australian Government and the
“We believe we have a very unique op- local community who we’re communicating
portunity to supplement the current supply with at the moment.”
of rare earths from China. Up until a couple Forecasts from the International Energy
of years ago, the illegal production of rare Agency suggest the demand for rare earth
earths in China was a very significant prob- permanent magnets will increase sevenfold
lem. China has now clamped down on that, over the next two decades. Kingsnorth said
but that illegal production itself was largely current production trajectories point to an
based on the ionic clays and that’s why re- imminent supply deficit and the world needs
sources of their ionic clays have dropped more material from outside China.
off appreciably. Probably about 50% of their “In the heavy rare earths space, we need
ironic clays are now being sourced from My- China plus a couple of others, and we be-
anmar, and that in itself presents quite a big lieve AREL is going to be one of the ‘couple
[jurisdictional] risk.” of others’ in the heavy rare earths space out-
AREL was founded by now non-executive side China,” he said. “We’re not saying we’re
directors Rick Pobjoy and Bryn Jones and going to first, but we think we’ve got every
the company’s name was acquired from a opportunity to be amongst those which are
defunct real estate business. going to complement what China produces.”
In late 2019, Pobjoy and Jones identified
the ionic clay opportunity at Koppamurra AREL’s ionic clay-hosted Koppamurra – Michael Washbourne
during a visit to the South Australian Core rare earths project crosses the South
Library. Kingsnorth, who was looking to put Australian border into Victoria

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