Commerce Resources on Friday announced that, given industry interest in its wholly-owned Ashram project and its development to date, the company intends to restart the pilot plant programme at Hazen Research, in Colorado, and produce several kilograms of representative rare earth samples for delivery.

Additionally, the company intends to complete a bench-scale programme to upgrade its metallurgical-grade fluorspar concentrate to acid-grade and provide a sample of this higher-value product to Glencore in line with its request.

These metallurgical work programmes are expected to be completed concurrently to other Ashram project components, as a prefeasibility study (PFS) on the project advances.

The Ashram deposit is located in the Nunavik region of Quebec. It shares key characteristics with current and past producing rare earth element deposits globally, such as Bayan Obo and Maoniuping, in China, and Mountain Pass, in the US.

These include carbonatite hosted mineralisation, simple rare earth mineralogy, conventional mineral processing and large tonnage at appreciable grade.

These characteristics typically result in operations with relatively smaller metallurgical plant footprints, lower capital and operational expenditures and “dramatically” reduced technical risk during project development and production, Commerce explained.

Since discovery, Commerce has completed a significant amount of metallurgical testwork on Ashram deposit material, with a focus on upstream mineral processing.

This front-end flowsheet work on the Ashram deposit material has been highly successful, with the result that the company is now part of a distinct and select group of projects that have demonstrated they can produce high-grade mineral concentrates at high recovery, comparable with current and past hard rock producers.

The company’s flowsheet for the Ashram deposit was developed at Hazen Research in collaboration with Gerhard Merker at UVR-FIA. Commerce has successfully piloted several components of this flowsheet, including the flotation and hydrochloric acid leach stages.

Additionally, using an alternative flowsheet, Commerce produced its first mixed rare earth oxide sample through its collaboration with Université Laval, thereby further demonstrating the versatility in processing approaches.

Since the Ashram deposit’s discovery in 2009, a total of 25 317 m of drilling over 131 holes and five drill campaigns have been completed. Of this, a total of 15 692 m over 45 holes contributed to the current mineral resource estimate and preliminary economic assessment for the Ashram project, released in 2012.

Since that time, an additional 9 625 m over 86 holes have been completed, including geotechnical and hydrogeological focused holes, which will form the backbone of a PFS, once completed.

Commerce stressed that the Ashram deposit, being rooted in well-understood mineralogy, and conventional mineral processing, while also characterised by a deposit type that dominates commercial production, was a key global asset in the rare earth space and carried significant potential for development.