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Australia gets strategic with rare earthsASM dubbo

China largely has control of rare earths, and now the world knows it. The country has demonstrated it is willing to strategically withhold access to the critical mineral in times of turbulence, destabilising industries from automotive to medical and beyond.

Australia stands as a clear alternative supplier to China, with the resources and political connections to surge ahead of the pack. Now, we just need the projects to propel us there.

Australian Strategic Materials’ (ASX: ASM) Dubbo project in NSW is a globally significant critical minerals development aimed at producing a diverse range of metals essential for clean energy technologies, including rare earth elements, zirconium, niobium and hafnium.

The company’s mine to metals strategy is to extract, refine and manufacture high-purity metals and alloys, supplying direct to global manufacturers in clean energies, electric vehicles, defence and aerospace, electronics and communications.

The two key pillars of ASM’s vertically integrated materials business are mining and recovery of critical metal oxides from the polymetallic Dubbo project and the establishment of metals plants in strategic global locations to convert oxides into high-purity critical metals and alloys.

ASM has been riding a wave of increasing momentum in metal and alloy sales. Its wholly-owned Korean Metals Plant (KMP) is one of the few establishments outside China — and the only one listed on the ASX — capable of commercially producing rare earth metals and alloys. This unique standing has caught the attention of plenty of potential customers, sparking a flurry of sales enquiries and speeding up discussions and has led to confirmed sales of neodymium-praseodymium metal and neodymium iron boron alloy to key partners.

Promising results from the company’s heap leach metallurgical testwork have given the Rare Earth Options Assessment (REOA) a bit of a boost. The tests turned up decent recovery results for magnetic rare earth elements, painting an optimistic picture of a more cost-effective way to get the Dubbo project off the ground and keep the project’s economics solid.

Moreover, ASM has been strategic with its finances, refinancing its loan facility with the Korean Development Bank (KDB). This move gives the company more financial breathing room to focus on ramping up technical capabilities and activities for the KMP.

ASM managing director and chief executive Rowena Smith says end customers are increasingly looking for supply chain certainty in a very volatile industry.

“There’s a lot of people talking about what they’re planning to do in the future, and ASM is positioned so that actually we can deliver product today,” she said.

“We’re able to give product from our Korean metals plant, either in those high purity metals or in those alloys, today.

“It’s an exciting time to be growing as this alternate supply chain grows too.

With a backup feedstock supply plan tucked away, ASM seems well-placed to keep forging ahead in creating a resilient and alternative rare earth supply chain outside China.

The Australia Mining Review speaks with Ms Smith to see how ASM is shaking up operations and what it might mean for the future of rare earths mining.

AMR: What is the importance of the Dubbo project in bolstering Australia’s standing in the global supply chain of critical minerals? What makes Dubbo globally significant?

RS: The Dubbo project is one of the few advanced, long-life rare earth projects globally that has both light and heavy rare earths. In that regard it is of strategic significance.

Since China put restrictions on heavy rare earths, there has been a very strong focus globally on being able to source heavy rare earth oxides. The Dubbo project has an unusually high proportion of heavy rare earths in the overall basket mix. It makes a very attractive project from that regard and we’re one of very few that have developed the designs and tested them to be able to produce those rare earths all the way through to separated oxides. We have proven technology that will take that through to a light rare earth neodymium-praseodymium oxide, as well as a dysprosium oxide and a terbium oxide, which are those two very sought after, heavy rare earth oxides. This makes them very easily accessible into the value chains beyond Dubbo.

We have a mine to metal strategy, which distinguishes ASM from most of the other players in this industry. This means that in addition to Dubbo and the commitment to taking ore through to separated oxides, we also have the next two steps in the supply chain: metallising and alloying. We’ve already built and are operating the first of our metals plants in Korea, and we are currently well-progressed in our planning for expanding that capability into the US.

The opportunity for Dubbo is that it is a project that, when it comes online, can immediately integrate into an established downstream processing facility that then ensures there’s a pathway to market.

AMR: How is ASM gearing up to push forward its processing technologies and what is the rough schedule for getting production facilities up and running?

RS: The first of our metals facilities in South Korea is already in production. We’ve been producing light rare earth metals there since 2022. We produce a neodymium praseodymium metal, and we also make the specialist strip alloy, neodymium iron boron that is the main constituent for the high-performance magnets that these rare earths are used in.

Since those announcements came out from China restricting the export of the magnets, neodymium iron boron alloy and the heavy rare earth oxides, we’ve seen a very strong interest in securing materials from our Korean plant.

We currently have a planning timeline, subject to funding and a decision to progress, for the expansion of that capability to the US. We’re currently contemplating commencing construction of a new metals facility in 2027.

In addition to the product suites that we have already established, we’re also developing our own technology and capability to metallise the heavy rare earth oxides to be able to make high purity dysprosium and terbium metals. We’re working on establishing that from the lab scale that we were successful in last year to take it up to commercial scale this year.

We’re very close to making our first sale of small volumes of high purity dysprosium and terbium metal from the Korean facility as part of that development pathway.

AMR: What do international partnerships unlock for the Dubbo project?

RS: We have customers established and now announced in public domain in Korea, in Europe, in the US and Canada with leading magnet producers. We’re not just dealing with the best of the magnet producers, both established and emerging outside of China, but we’re working with them collaboratively across multiple jurisdictions. It is a collaboration, because all the alloys that we’re making for them are customer specific, so there’s a lot of work to go through product development and product validation with each of them individually. It’s exciting for us to work so closely with them as they are establishing their ramp ups as the market is much more motivated to purchase non-China sourced magnets.

We have also been very active in looking for where we will source materials prior to Dubbo coming online, because we’ve got this in production, but Dubbo is still in development, so we’ve also been working with suppliers in Australia, the US and Europe, to be able to provide us with third party oxides that are a key part of the ramp up of the Korean Metals Plant.

The other international partnerships that are key are with the export credit agencies. That’s less so for the funding for metallisation and more for the development that we’re doing at Dubbo.

We have a comprehensive flow sheet for Dubbo and we have very strong momentum in getting funding for that with the ECAs in Australia, the US and Canada, all in public domain. We have more than $1.5b worth of interest from the ECAs for support for that project. But the project is capital intensive.

We have been challenging ourselves: is there a way of approaching the execution of Dubbo in phases, rather than doing the whole of the product suite? In addition to the rare earths, Dubbo also has three other critical minerals: zirconia, hafnia and niobium. We end up with a very comprehensive product suite that is adding to the upfront capital. The challenge is to define an easier implementation pathway by doing just the rare earths in the first phase. That process is one that we’ve been studying to see whether there’s a viable alternative, which we released the recovery results on just recently. I’m anticipating putting out the scoping study that shows the economic viability of that in July, and that would see us on a pathway to being in production around 2029.

Those discussions with the ECAs are really important for the debt side of the funding. We are anticipating that capital for this alternative processing option will be well less than $1b, so there will be a much easier pathway for us with the existing support that we have from the ECAs, to be able to get the offtakes and equity to move forward.

Also important is the government support that we’ve been receiving. As we’ve been undertaking the US strategic expansion, we are seeing phenomenal strengthening of the policy in the US that is enabling that opportunity. I’m spending a lot of time going back and forth to Washington, DC at the moment. This speaks to the strength of the relationship between Australia and the US and the fact that Australia is considered a domestic source for the US at a time when the country is really prioritising developing alternative supply chains for rare earths.

AMR: The lab results from the Dubbo project are showing impressive recoveries of rare earth elements. What technologies have made this possible? Can you break down how this might play out in the project’s overall costs and sway future funding considerations?

RS: The circumstances there are that Dubbo is a very high-grade resource compared to most of the rare earth projects that we hear about. There’s a lot of discussion around the clays and the mineral sands and the Dubbo project is much higher grade than that. Usually when you have a higher-grade deposit, you do a sulfide bake as the first step. This is a very CAPEX and OPEX intensive first step.

What we have been able to demonstrate with these recovery results is that our ore body is very amenable to atmospheric heap leaching to recover the rare earths. That is what gives us the opportunity for something that will be quite transformational, giving us a much lower CAPEX and OPEX intensive first step to get Dubbo into production. Off the back of the revenues that we’re getting from that first phase, we’ll be able to go in and complete the second phase of the flow sheet and put in the zirconia, hafnia and niobium circuits as value accretion at a later point.