Below is an interesting response from The Rare Earth Observer to a Benchmark article about African RE resources wherein their assessment of Kangankunde stands out from the pack:
The article is however a little confusing; it starts out with the Benchmark article title i.e. "Rise of African rare earths bolsters..............." then goes on to critique where this supply might actually come from (I've highlighted the good bit about K in bold below):
Castles in the sky
Tanzaniawill become one of China’s fastest-growing sources of imported rare earth oresthis decade, despite producing none today.
Underthe presumption that Peak Rare Earth and Shenghe will work out, else not. AndWigu Hills is and remains under international arbitration. No chance of turningout anything by 2029, or ever.
Tanzaniais only one of five African countries that have rare earths projects due tocome online by 2029. The others are Angola, South Africa, Malawi, and Uganda.
Thedevil lives in the detail.
First of all, where should the billions of dollars for enablingmining of these deposits come from? Any clever suggestions?
Then:
- Angola’s Longonjo is a rare-earth-enriched thorium resource with a difficult mineralisation. There is no trace of the promised “bunkers” for the radioactive waste in the planning, only an open tailings storage. With governments of Angola, the UK and EU as well the IAEA turning a blind eye, Longonjo in Angola could become a potential repeat of the Bukit Merah catastrophe in Malaysia. But we expect an exit of the operator anyway.
- South Africa’s Glenover has been around for ages and nothing ever happened, the Steenkampskraal mine is so hot (for Benchmark: this is lingo for high levels of radiation) that crews - if there were any - could only spend very limited time working there, Zandkopsdrift is and remains dormant, the only one with a reasonable prospect of going live is small-but-beautiful Phalaborwa;
- Malawi (Mulanje, Machinga, Kangankunde, Milenje Hills, Nkalonje Hill, Songwe Hill, Nanthache Hill) on paper there is only Lindian’s Kangankunde whose feasibility assumptions look reasonable (chapeau to Project Blue).Infrastructure is a substantial challenge. Songwe Hill’s PEA is a disaster and a prime example why rare earth projects fail;
- Uganda’s Nankoma is dormant and Makuutu is ion adsorption clay (IAC) on Uganda’s comparatively rather shallow groundwater table. In-situ leaching of the deposit with ammonium sulphate solution will not only poison the groundwater. Similar to China’s Bayan Obo problem with polluted radioactive groundwater assumed to be seeping slowly towards the Yellow River, northern China’s prime water resource, Lake Victoria, one of Africa’s main water resources, could be at risk from in-situ leaching of IAC in Makuutu. Alternative tank-leaching will kill the project commercially.
WiguHill in Tanzania has been under international arbitration for quite a while. Vital Metals will only be able to own it should Montero win in arbitration against Tanzania and if Montero stick to the original deal. And if Vital Metals should be successful in taking the shortcut in Tanzania, it will be its Chinese shareholder who will finance and control everything going forward. Overall zero potential of supplies to EU.
Africanrare earths should become critical to Western rare earths supply chains facingcost challenges in building ex-China mined capacity.
Theoverall cost challenges are no different from elsewhere, but with a differentdistribution/weight.
Theissue in the “West” is regulatory, there is no permanent disposal home forinevitably occurring radioactive waste from processing. This refers to thoriumand uranium, as residual actinium, if any, so far has been impossible toseparate from lanthanum. The memory of Neo’sradioactive waste disposal problem in Estonia still lingers.
The“Solvay doctrine” of leaving the radioactive waste to the miners is resource colonialism, unfit for the 21st century, in no way compatible with the spirit of universal sustainability of growth enshrined in the Paris Agreement.
Evenif there was the one or the other '“radionuclide-free” rare earth resource, themarket sizes of the valuable rare earth elements in both, the U.S. and the EU,are actually too small to justify additional rare earth processing - on top ofmissing rare earth metal making.
IfBenchmark would listen closely, they could gather the acknowledgement of thisopen secret from rare-earth hopefuls’ presentations.
OverallBenchmark’s assessment can only be viewed as a shallow and uninformed.
(20min delay)