Accelerating the Development of Australia’s Rare Earth Resources

Project goal:

Unlock Australia’s potential to develop cost competitive and sustainable new sources of heavy rare earths from lower grade deposits and diversify supply chains of the technologies dependent on REE.

Challenge / Opportunity:

• REE are essential components of permanent magnets, catalysts, and metal alloys to name just a few advanced uses. REE demand is growing rapidly due to being required for clean energy technologies.
• Global supply chains are highly concentrated, particularly for magnets, and subject to export controls and production restrictions. Australia is well positioned to meet growing demand and help diversify supply chains.
• REE are typically extracted from hard rock and mineral sand deposits using high energy and very corrosive processes. Most of these deposits are dominated by the light rare earths rather than the more valuable heavy rare earths.
• In contrast, REE hosted in lower grade clay deposits are typically enriched in heavy REE and can be extracted using more cost effective and environmentally sustainable techniques. Australia has untapped potential in these types of ore deposits.
• The three agencies are bringing the strengths of value chain scientific cooperation to this challenge to unlock Australia’s potential to become a significant alternative supplier of heavy rare earths.

Project status:

• Geoscience Australia has completed a comprehensive national review and assessment of priority lower grade REE deposit types and is now developing mineral systems models and potential maps for these deposits.
• CSIRO has provided detailed characterisation and analysis of samples to support Geoscience Australia’s assessment.
• ANSTO has benchmarked ‘conventional’ processing techniques and made significant progress in developing a novel advanced separation flowsheet.
• A significant milestone will be the construction of a purpose-built pilot plant for processing low grade ores from Australian deposits. The facility is being constructed at ANSTO in Lucas Heights and should be available to industry in 2026.
• All outputs will be available to industry in 2026, and will help de-risk commercial opportunities for developing these deposits.

Resources