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At 640 million tonnes going 490ppm magnetic rare earth oxides (MREO), Critica says Jupiter is the largest magnet-based rare earths play in Australia. It would very likely give some of the larger global projects a run for their money, too.
So why hasn’t the $60 million Critica shot the lights out yet with big offtake agreements and US chequebooks looking to fund a mine?
Well, that may well happen – and soon.
The hurdle for Critica right now is the nature of its rare earths. They are known as “non-ionic” as opposed to “ionic”. There is still work to be done to prove up the processing route for non-ionic, as there are not too many examples of them being mined around the world. And on that front, Critica is a bit like the proverbial bulldog eating porridge, with a massive amount of work going on across multiple streams to arrive at a successful processing flowsheet to leach its non-ionic rare earths product.
Earlier this year, Critica employed engineer Jacob Deysel to run the company. He has three internal PhDs on salary reporting to him and has also outsourced processing pathway design work to some of the best and brightest in the industry, ahead of building a pilot plant, which is currently underway.
Critica recently launched three parallel technical programs aimed at cracking the processing code for non-ionic, clay-based rare earths from Jupiter, which is near WA’s old mining town of Mt Magnet.
The centrepiece to unlocking the processing puzzle is the renowned East Coast-based Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO). Ansto is running independent hydrometallurgical testwork to produce a mixed rare earth carbonate (MREC) from a concentrate that has already been upgraded more than 800 per cent from a standard beneficiation process using magnetic separation and flotation.
That last bit, by the way, is the key and an advantage that non-ionic rare earths enjoy over the better-known ionic rare earths, according to Deysel. He says his mined ore can be reduced in volume by up to 95 per cent courtesy of simple magnetic separation followed by a flotation circuit.
And the kicker?
When that mass reduces by 95 per cent, the grade jumps by more than 800 per cent, leaving just 5 per cent of the mass to be leached at a ridiculously high concentrate that assays between 10,000ppm and 20,000ppm TREO.
While there is still work to do, Deysel is looking to show that reduced mass will ultimately lead to smaller mining plants, lower capex and lower opex given the crazy high reduction in volume.
Alongside ANSTO, Critica has enlisted specialist processing firm Minutech for parallel leach testing on the composite concentrate, while Hanoi-based GAVAQ is building the pilot beneficiation plant that will test the commercial viability of its flowsheet.
Critica will be looking to the soon-to-be-commissioned pilot plant to replicate or surpass the bench-scale results of mass reduction and grade increases. Those results will enable inputs for a scoping study, providing key data on tailings characteristics, flow sheet economics and processing efficiencies.
Management believes vital decision-grade data will be revealed from the program, including recovery levels, concentrate specifications and reagent consumption, which will provide valuable direct inputs into its scoping study and help optimise the hydrometallurgical flow sheet.
Deysel said: “Approving the Jupiter pilot and appointing GAVAQ is a key step on our ‘scale, simplicity, speed’ roadmap. By upgrading before leaching, we reject about 95 per cent of mass and lift grades more than eight-fold ahead of hydrometallurgy. That translates into a smaller leach plant, lower reagent use and a cleaner, faster path to MREC.”
In the electric vehicle industrial magnet world, there are two types of rare earths: “lights” (think neodymium and praseodymium) and the even more lucrative “heavies” (dysprosium and terbium). While in percentage terms, Jupiter has more light rare earths than heavies, the sheer scale of the deposit still sees the contained metal count within the deposit for heavy rare earths clock in at a staggering 280,000 tonnes.
As if cued in, the broader rare earths market also appears to be entering another bullish phase, in part boosted by recent positive moves in the US.
According to research from leading UK bank Barclays, demand for magnet rare earths is expected to grow five-fold by 2040.
Neodymium-praseodymium prices have already rebounded in recent months from US$66/kg to nearly US$97/kg, according to the Shanghai Metals Market website. The US has effectively guaranteed a floor price for Mountain Pass of US$110/kg, reflecting the strategic value of these critical inputs to at least the US. There is even talk that the Australian Government might put its hand in its pocket to do something similar.
Jupiter’s mineralisation has other advantages too. It kicks off just a few metres below surface, cutting down expensive strip ratios dramatically and it has extremely low nuisance minerals present, such as uranium and thorium, which are known to make like difficult in other projects.
And even though Jupiter screams scale, it is just one of six deposits at Critica’s broader Brothers play, pointing to a project that will easily muscle its way onto the global stage if Critica and its army of technocrats can crack the processing code for non-ionic rare earths.
For instance, the Aurora and Juno prospects have already returned up to an impressive 4256ppm TREO and magnet rare earths up to 34 per cent of the TREO content.
Jupiter is a standout asset with a massive magnet rare earths resource at shallow depth in a tier-one location that ticks almost all the boxes. However, for Critica to catapult from explorer to globally significant rare earths player, it still needs to crack the non-ionic rare earths processing code. With an army of PhDs and external technocrats working on the issue around the clock, don’t be surprised if it manages to turn massive resources into massive revenues sometime soon – or better still... The Donald comes knocking.
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