For those that like to turn a hand to maths, it seems that the Ardea - Kalpini Rare Earth and Rare Metals announcement of 14th March 2022 with a heading in red colour as follows:
High -grade Nickel -Cobalt - Confirmed at Kalpini with Scandium and Rare Earth Elements.
may well be worthy of some calculations as some ARL holders may well have overlooked this announcement.
Significant Rare Earth Element (REE) and Rare Metal (RM) grades were indicated within the historic nickel-cobalt laterite mineralisation, including:• WERC0371: 12m at 1.70% nickel, 0.151% cobalt, 28g/t scandium from 20m with;o 0.244% Total Rare Earth Oxide (TREO) includes neodymium (Nd), praseodymium (Pr), lanthanum (La), cerium(ce)
o 1.320% Total Rare Metal Oxide (TRMO) Includes titanium (Ti), yttrium (Y), zircon (Zr), niobium (Nb), hafnium (Hf), tantalum (Ta) and tungsten (W) •
VKPRC0112: 4m at 1.66% nickel, 0.102% cobalt, 40g/t scandium from 29m with; o 0.1297% TREO o 0.7193% TRMO.
Subject to current bench-scale metallurgical test-work on Highway core material, REEs and RMs at Kalpini will be targeted to provide potential by-product credits as does cobalt and also potentially scandium.
As demonstrated for cobalt in the 2018 Goongarrie Pre-feasibility Study (PFS) (ASX release 28 March 2018), with the aggressive autoclave hydrometallurgical metal dissolution, the rare earth and rare metals are expected to go into solution with the target nickel. The REE and RM recovery and quantifying its marginal cost is a key deliverable for the current Ardea-ALS metallurgical Research and Development (R&D).
Ardea’s Managing Director, Andrew Penkethman, said: “The Kalpini drill pulp re-assay was a major undertaking for Ardea in 2021, with the principal objective to validate historic resource drilling and obtain scandium assays for the current re-estimation of the full Kalgoorlie Nickel Project (KNP) Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE). The importance of cobalt as a significant revenue contributor for the KNP was validated in the 2018 PFS. Significantly, the cobalt revenue credit reduced the then estimated C1 operating cost from US$5.59/lb to US$0.42/lb*. If scandium and now REEs can be configured in the flowsheeet as additional revenue contributors, there are significant improvements to the already robust KNP financial metrics.These studies are all subject to the current Ardea-ALS bench-scale metallurgical R&D, where material with REE and RM credits are targeted in R&D programs. These R&D programs for Ardea are specifically targeting Critical Minerals, as supply chain security is more important than ever as the World continues the transition to a low carbon future.”
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