PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Canadian rare earths miner Vital Metals has started commissioning its rare earth extraction facility in Saskatoon, Canada, starting ore feed into the dense media separation (DMS) plant.
Vital will commission the Saskatoon facility incrementally over coming months with plans to produce a 2.5 t of rare earth carbonate sample for offtake partner REEtec Ag as the next step of product qualification.
Vital is processing ore from its Nechalacho operation in Canada’s Northwest Territories, where mining started in mid-2021.
“This is an exciting step for the company as we continue our transition from rare earth developer to operator. We have been a rare earth miner for more than 12 months and now we can commence production of rare earth carbonate. We are excited to have reached this milestone at Saskatoon despite the challenges surrounding supply chains and logistics across the world,” said MD Geoff Atkins.
“We are targeting to produce 2.5 t of carbonate for REEtec as an important step of our production qualification process before we commence ramping up our volume. We are forecasting for this to occur in October 2022.”
Vital’s Saskatoon plant will have initial throughput capacity of 1 000 t/y of rare earth oxide, excluding cerium, which is equivalent to 470 t/y of neodymium praseodymium (NdPr).
Stage 2 will produce 2 000 t/y of rare earth oxide, excluding cerium, equivalent to 940 t/y NdPr.
Under Vital’s amended offtake agreement with REEtec, following REEtec’s decision to use Vital’s product as its principal feedstock for its rare earth separation facility, Vital will incrementally deliver 187.5 t NdPr to REEtec by October 2023 and a minimum of 750 t/y of NdPr over five years for a total 3 750 t NdPr, contained within some 2 000 t/y of total rare earth oxide.