ABx Group’s 83 per cent-owned subsidiary Alcore has captured a research-and-development tax offset of $522,715 from the Australian Tax Office for work undertaken last year on its world-first process to recover hydrogen fluoride.
Alcore has developed the ground-breaking process where it recovers hydrogen fluoride from an aluminium smelter waste product. The product is then combined with aluminium hydroxide to produce aluminium fluoride, a high-value chemical essential for aluminium smelting.
Management says it also expects to receive an additional tax offset for the R&D activities it undertook at its Deep Leads-Rubble Mound rare earths project in Tasmania.
ABx Group managing director and chief executive officer Mark Cooksey said: “ABx Group and ALCORE are appreciative of the support from the Australian Government’s R&D Tax Incentive program, which provides critical support for companies that invest to boost competitiveness and improve productivity. The R&D tax offset is further evidence of the strength of ALCORE’s development program. The tax offset follows the $7.5 million grant from the Federal Government’s Modern Manufacturing Initiative, of which $5.7 million has been received to date.”
Rapid urbanisation and industrial development are the main growth factors for the aluminium fluoride industry in the Asia Pacific, particularly in China, Japan, India and South Korea.
China is one of the world’s biggest producers of aluminium and the country’s aluminium market is expected to expand in the next five years as a result of increased co-operation between the government and other industries to encourage the development of cutting-edge technologies that reduce processed waste and lower production costs. That should then push the growth of the aluminium fluoride market.
The rising demand for aluminium fluoride in emerging economies such as China and India, in addition to the increased use of reprocessed aluminium products, also provides the market with opportunities. In North America, car makers in the United States are attempting to minimise car weight in order to comply with government restrictions on gas emissions, which could lead to an increase in the use of aluminium in vehicles and boost the demand for aluminium fluoride.
Last month, ABx bumped up its ionic-adsorption clay-hosted Tasmanian rare earths mineral resource estimate by 30 per cent to 27 million tonnes averaging 803 parts per million total rare earth oxides (TREO).
The company’s updated figure – up from its previous May estimate of 21 million tonnes containing 770ppm TREO – comes courtesy of an additional 36 drillholes that stretched its target area across a 16km strike from the Deep Leads-Rubble Mound deposit through to its recent Windbreak discovery.
Since declaring a maiden resource estimate late last year at its rare earths project west of Launceston on the Apple Isle, ABx has kept the drill rods spinning, increasing its resource by a staggering 680 per cent.
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By Steve Kaless
