Australian Securities Exchange-listed Lindian Resources has signed up France’s Carester to help advance a definitive feasibility study on its proposed rare earth oxide plant in north-eastern Kazakhstan and buy up to 70% of the mixed heavy rare earth products from the facility under an initial 10-year offtake deal.
Lindian, which also expects to be producing monazite/rare earth oxide concentrate from its US$40 million Kangankunde project in Malawi this year, has engaged Carester to work with Tetra Tech Coffey on the Stepnogorsk plant DFS. A proposed 8000 tonnes per annum rare earth oxide (REO) solvent extraction and separation facility could supply both mixed heavy rare earths compound and mixed HRE carbonate to Carester’s Caremag refinery in Lacq, France, where it aims to refine circa-5000tpa of mining concentrates and about 2000tpa of permanent magnets to produce dysprosium, terbium oxides and neodymium-praseodymium oxides.
Carester won €216 million in refinery construction financing from the French Government and Japan’s Iwatani Corporation and Japan Organization for Metals and Energy Security (JOGMEC).
With extension options, Carester’s offtake agreement with Lindian could run for 20 years.
Lindian said earlier this month it was buying the former Sumitomo Corporation and Kazatomprom-operated SARECO (Summit Atom Rare Earth Company) mixed rare earths carbonate hydrometallurgical processing facility in Stepnogorsk for US$20 million. “SARECO is the only constructed and operational MREC and cracking, leaching and purification processing facility of commercial scale outside of China, MP Materials, Serra Verde and Lynas Rare Earths,” the company said.
SARECO was established by Kazakhstan uranium major Kazatomprom and Sumitomo to recover rare earth elements from uranium-derived residues, with the Stepnogorsk facility commissioned in 2012.
Lindian said it was targeting MREC processing in the fourth quarter this year, when it was also anticipating first production from Kangankunde.
It recently raised A$100 million of equity funding.
Lindian also recently finalised an option deal to access more than 13,000t of SARECO heavy rare earth element stockpiled material at Aktau in southwestern Kazakhstan, described by executive director Zac Komur as “strategically important because it was historically used as feedstock for SARECO, providing Lindian with the opportunity to re-establish an in-country rare earth feed source for the facility”.
Lindian has a 15-year offtake deal with Australian mineral sands miner Iluka Resources to supply concentrate from Kangankunde to Iluka’s new A$1.8 billion Eneabba rare earths refinery in Western Australia, due to come on line in 2027. It expects to produce what it calls a premium monazite concentrate containing 55% total rare earth oxides (TREO) and no deleterious elements, from a c450,000tpa plant at Kangankunde.
“The agreement with Carester represents another significant step in Lindian’s strategy to move further downstream to expand our markets and to capture more of the value from the rare earths that we produce,” Lindian executive chairman Robert Martin said.
“Following our acquisition of 100% of the SARECO MREC facility, we now have an established processing platform from which we can produce mixed rare earth concentrate and mixed rare earth carbonates as we move towards the realisation of producing separated oxides.
“Carester brings both world-class separation expertise and a long-term route to market for our heavy rare earth production. It is targeting approximately 15% of global dysprosium and terbium oxide production, demonstrating the strategic importance of the supply chain that we are building.
“We have stage one of Kangankunde on track for commissioning in November this year, our SARECO preventative maintenance programs are now underway for full commissioning in October this year, Kangankunde stage two DFS and the DFS for the oxide facility both also due in December this year which in turn is positioning Lindian to be one of the few truly vertically integrated mine to separated oxides producers globally.”
