ASX-listed Cobar Metals has announced a maiden resource estimate for scandium, adding to the already valuable basket of minerals hosted at the Salazar project, north-east of Esperance in Western Australia.
The Salazar project contains significant indicated and inferred resources of rare earth elements of 83-million tonnes at 1 117 parts per million (ppm) rare earth oxide and inferred resources of titanium dioxide.
The Newmont deposit at Salazar now also contains 12-million tonnes of 103 ppm scandium, using a cutoff of 75 ppm.
“Scandium is a very high-value critical mineral (the current scandium oxide price is circa $856/kg) which has the potential to enhance the overall project economics,” said MD Matt Szwedzicki.
Used in the aerospace and defence industry, scandium is listed as a critical mineral in the US and Australia. West Cobar pointed out that there were few sources of scandium supply globally, noting that Rio Tinto had recently purchased the Owendale scandium deposit in New South Wales and established a dedicated scandium business unit.