Leading Edge Materials Announces Positive Preliminary Economic Assessment Results for its Norra Karr REE Project in Sweden - 2021

Rare Earth Deposits & Mining

Leading Edge Materials Corporation announced the technical report for its Norra Karr rare earth element project dated August 19, 2021. The Report is an update having the main PEA highlights (In comparison to the 2015 Preliminary Feasibility Study:)

• Significant increase in resource utilization by proposing recovery of nepheline syenite (NS) industrial mineral, zirconium oxide (Zr) and niobium oxide (Nb) products in addition to the rare earth oxide (“REO”) products. In the PEA more than 50% of total mined material is planned to be sold as products compared with previously less than 1% in the 2015 PFS. The PEA also identifies future opportunities to valorize the residual mined material which could potentially result in all mineralized material mined to be treated as potential commercial products.
  
  
• Introducing a revised Project flowsheet to minimize the environmental footprint at the Norra Karr site:
  
  • The Norra Karr site will only include mining and comminution methods consisting of crushing, milling and magnetic separation, eliminating all chemical processing from Norra Karr and associated waste vs the 2015 PFS study. In the PEA following physical separation resulting material streams either are shipped as products or as concentrates for further processing at other locations and a single waste stream to be stored at the Norra Karr site.
    
    
  • The rare earth, zirconium and niobium bearing concentrate will be transported to a dedicated off-site location for chemical processing and further recovery.
• The combination of the above, results in a single waste stream at the Norra Karr site consisting of the mineral aegirine which can be dry stacked in a lined impoundment together with waste rock from mining, eliminating the need for a wet tailings storage facility. This new design substantially reduces land area usage of the Project by approximately 80% (see Figure 1) and results in no chemical process tailing dams being required at Norra Karr. These changes considerably reduce the environment risk profile of the Project at Norra Karr.
  
  
• In addition, the removal of chemical processing and wet tailings at Norra Karr delivers an overall predicted 51% reduction in water requirements over the life of mine vs the 2015 PFS study. Use of mine dewatering for processing can reduce additional water requirements by almost 100% and the elimination of discharge requirements to local water bodies compared with the 2015 PFS design.
  
  
• The PEA introduces the design of an off-site chemical recovery plant located close to reagent supplies within an existing brownfield development area where mixed REO (MREO), Zr and Nb products are planned to be recovered. Residual process waste at the off-site facility consists of neutralized leach residue and gypsum disposed of in geomembrane lined dry stack impoundments. The Report identifies the future potential to further process the gypsum waste into a gypsum product for construction material markets.