I'm not suggesting it's a pump and dump. I'm...

I'm not suggesting it's a pump and dump. I'm suggesting people are investing based on the wording of announcements that this is an IAC deposit and make an assumption we can start leaching it and shovelling it like China does. Lots of companies are using the "ionic clay" buzzwords right now for anything that has REE potential in soft ground. The economic deposits of that are basically unique to China not just because of the rainforests and geological sequences needed, but because their politics allows it to be easily leached and extracted through cheap mass labour and lots of acid.

Even if it was possible to find identical deposits to what China has (happy for any geologists out there to give us odds on the possibility of those geological and climatic sequences occurring in rainforests in WA?), we've probably missed the boat on it now. The barriers to entry to process those low grade, short life, deposits en masse like they do are huge. They've got a lock on it and selling our REE back to China to process is a pretty clear sovereign risk.

In my opinion, finding ways to commercialise other mixed and hard rock deposits found in large amounts is where the future is at - higher grades, more of it, and you don't compete with or rely on China. Western countries are looking to invest in technology for longer life supply chains, from places that aren't China. That'll mean proving up really large deposits holding critical REE for future extraction.