PERTH (miningweekly.com) - Rare earths developer Hastings Technology has reported a 26% upgrade to the life-of-mine (LoM) total rare earth oxide head grade at its Yangibana project, in the Gascoyne region, with the addition of an ore sorter to the process flowsheet.
The company told shareholders that based on the average content of alumina and silica for all Yangibana deposits, that 24% of the proposed crusher feed would be rejected by the ore sorters as waste at the expense of only 4% total rare earth oxide volumes across the LoM schedule.
“These results are enormously satisfying and exceed all our expectations; the introduction of ore sorting has removed waste or very low-grade material to deliver a significant overall improvement in the mine head grade that will be put through the more advanced stages of Yangibana’s process flow sheet,” said Hastings COO Andrew Reid.
“This, in turn, has the potential to reduce Yangibana’s processing operating costs and further enhance the value of the industry high levels of neodymium and praseodymium contained in our ore bodies.
“Importantly, the rejection of waste or very low-grade material at the front-end of the process has had almost no impact on Yangibana’s LoM, underpinning the potential win-win of adding the ore sorter to the overall process flow sheet.
“Hastings will now progress the detailed design for an ore sorting system that can process 100% of Yangibana’s LoM mine feed material.”