PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Rare earths miner Northern Minerals on Monday announced plans to raise A$30-million to ramp-up ore sorting, product separation and exploration initiatives at its Browns Range project, in Western Australia.
Northern Minerals will issue more than 483.8-million shares, at a price of 6.2c each, to sophisticated and institutional investors, with the private placement to be split into three tranches.
The first 158.7-million shares will be placed before July 23, to raise an initial A$9.8-million under the company’s existing placement capacity, with asome 59-million of the 161.2-million shares to be issued under the second tranche, also issued under existing capacity.
The second tranche will raise an additional A$10-million by August 9, with the third tranche of 163.8-million shares expected to raise an additional A$10.1-million before the end of August.
Northern Minerals on Monday also approved the expansion of project enhancements at Browns Range, in response to significantly increased levels of interest in the company and the project from a number of parties, including potential customers and investors.
The company previously identified ore sorting as a potential game changer for the Browns Range project, with initial testwork indicating the potential to double the feed grade going into the plant.
The front-end engineering and design for the ore-sorter system has now started with the selection of the ore sorter to be made within the week, and targeted for operation by mid-2020.
Meanwhile, the current pilot plant at Browns Range produces a mixed heavy rare earth carbonate, which requires downstream processing in China to separate into individual higher value rare earth oxides.
In order to capture additional margin and transact directly with end-users, Northern Minerals was planning to investigate the potential for additional separation technology to its existing processing capabilities.
The testwork will initially be conducted overseas, as there was no heavy rare earth separation technologies operational in Australia, but if the technology investigation proved successful, Northern Minerals would look to incorporate the technology at its plant.
In addition to the expansions at Browns Range, Northern Minerals would also expand exploration at the project to potentially extend the mine life