Greg Klein reports that as Molycorp bankruptcy leaves Lynas Corp the sole producer outside China, Core Consultants reportedly told Mining Indaba-16 to expect more rare earth project closures. But it is against this background of lower prices and higher supply that Commerce Resources continues to raise money and move its Ashram deposit in northern Quebec towards pre-feasibility. Clearly something distinguishes this project, which president Chris Grove is determined to develop into a low-cost producer competitive with China. That has potential customers interested.
Metallurgical success, high grades, a near-surface deposit, a potential byproduct and five critical REEs have Commerce Resources optimistic about the Ashram potential. The key to low costs is the relatively simple mineralogy of the deposit, Grove maintains, a crucial point that sets Ashram apart from other projects. Rare earths can be hosted by up to about 200 different minerals and several rock types, but very few have ever been commercially processed, he explains. Commerce realized early that we must focus on carbonatite rocks with rare earths hosted in the minerals monazite, bastnasite and xenotime, which have proven processing. Almost no one else did that.
But even compared to other carbonatite-hosted deposits, our gangue material is just more amenable to separation, he emphasizes. With REE deposits, if your grade is 2% or 3% then the rest is waste rock or gangue, and the very composition of this gangue may mean a make-or-break situation, if you can not economically separate the gangue from the REEs. But for Commerce, metallurgical studies look positive for economical separation. That is crucial to achieving low-cost processing from a project that also features high grades, a shallow deposit and a distribution of five critical rare-earth elements.
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