Red Metal Ltd says it has made a major breakthrough in metallurgical testing of its rare earths ore from the company’s Sybella project in Queensland that will result in less impurities and higher grades.
The company has managed to replace the standard two-stage impurity removal process with a simple Ion exchange process that will lower costs and increase purities.
Ion exchange plants are commonly used for primary metal recovery of uranium, nickel and cobalt and for water purification.
Additional advantages include scope to make a significantly higher purity mixed rare earth carbonate (MREC), materially lower alkali costs, reduced flowsheet complexity and much lower operating and capital costs for impurity removal and MREC precipitation.
Red Metal says it has many advantages with its soft ore at Sybella, ranging from the free-digging for the first 10m, the relatively simple time-saving crushing process, to reduced processing costs using low-acid solutions.
It says that Sybella’s soft ore lends itself to energy savings, low impurity levels after leaching, a smaller waste dump and it has no requirement for an expensive hydrometallurgical plant for extreme heating and cracking of the ore.
The Sybella deposit sits on 12km-long by 3km-wide granite-pervasive piece of ground that features ore susceptible to simple low-temperature processing, with management suggesting a resulting likelihood of a low-capex operation.
The company recently conducted intermittent bottle-roll tests on reverse-circulation (RC) drill chips from the weathered and fresh granite, which showed the ore to be ideal for a heap leach processing operation.
The testing confirms metal recovery rates and the chemical consumption of ore in a hydrometallurgical process.
Red Metal is also conducting impurity removal trials and column leach tests to improve metal recoveries and to confirm the bottle-roll tests.
Management believes completing its varied metallurgical testing on the ore allows it to better understand the potential for processing and extraction prior to engaging in expensive drilling programs.
A step-out drilling program to expand the mineralisation outside the known boundaries has now been completed. An 8km-by-3km area was tested to prove continuity of grade, with 120 holes drilled for 8171m.
Two zones of high-grade mineralisation, each about 1km wide, were unearthed and have the potential for massive tonnage. Once results from the submitted assays are returned, the company will complete infill drilling to upgrade to a mineral resource and hammer out a mining study.
Over in WA, Red Metal is drilling hard on two separate, high-impact fronts in the Pilbara at its Pulkarrimarra and Pardoo copper-gold projects. It is funding the aggressive push with a chunky $2.5 million cash injection secured through the exercise of unlisted options in the lead-up to the latest quarterly report.
The company is now well-positioned to tackle its WA copper-gold targets after successfully completing the capital raise in September and October, which saw over 20 million options exercised.
The vote of confidence extends directly to the boardroom. Red Metal Directors Russell Barwick and Robert Rutherford personally exercised over 1 million options at $0.13 per share on October 29, significantly increasing their direct shareholdings. Rutherford’s total shareholding now sits at over 14.9 million shares.
The funds are already being deployed into what the company hopes are two world-class hunting grounds. At the Pulkarrimarra project in the Paterson province, Red Metal is currently taking core from the high-priority gold target YE02, which sits along strike from Rio Tinto’s Winu discovery.
The geological thinking is sound; the target is a large, high-resistivity feature that reflects potential gold-copper mineralisation, perhaps similar to what is seen at Winu.
The second major Pilbara campaign is underway at the Pardoo project, which is testing separate magnetic targets within the highly prospective Hemi structural corridor. Red Metal has completed its initial reverse-circulation (RC) drill program on two proof-of-concept targets, with drill chips now logged and sampled.
Red Metal has a significant asset in its 35.8 per cent holding in Maronan Metals, which recently released a robust Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) on its shallow Starter Zone.
Maronan has a pair of 30 million-tonne ore bodies near Cloncurry in Queensland on its hands. Red Metal’s 88.5 million shares in Maronan Metals, which were trading at 0.31per share in late October, translates to an investment of approximately A27.4 million, a powerful, liquid asset that underpins the explorer’s valuation.
Red Metal is systematically advancing its Sybella rare earths project toward a scoping study planned for 2026. This is not a distraction—it is a clear path to production that is focused on capital discipline.
Advanced comminution studies and the discussed innovative ion exchange resin tests aim to define a low-capital cost, low-operating cost heap leach processing option. Large column leach test work is now scheduled to begin in mid-November 2025, delivering results in the new year.
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