LSE- and ASX-listed Pensana Rare Earths reports that it continues to progress two studies towards becoming a rare earths miner and establishing a magnet metal supply chain to meet rare earths demand from the electric vehicle and offshore wind industries.
The company has appointed consultants based in Perth to undertake a feasibility study into the production of mixed rare earth sulphate in Angola, while the company also initiated a Wood Group study into the establishment of a UK-based processing facility to produce separated rare earth oxides.
The processing facility’s study is expected to be concluded in January next year.
This while the Longonjo mine and concentrator study is well advanced, with capital costs remaining on track with the $130-million budget stated in the project’s preliminary feasibility study in November 2019.
Pensana in March expanded the scope of the Longonjo mine’s studies to include the processing of concentrate to produce a mixed rare earth carbonate, following which the company successfully produced the carbonate during trials in October.
Subsequent to this, a resin-based process route was developed that yields a high-grade mixed rare earth sulphate, which the company believes will be an ideal feedstock for the proposed separation facility in the UK.
Project manager Paradigm Project Management has recently gone out with several equipment packages for quotation from suppliers and contractors in preparation for the start of construction of the initial infrastructure and bulk site services at the Longonjo project in the first quarter of 2021.