Northern Minerals' Heavy Rare-Earth Brown's Range Mine Construction in Full Swing in Western Australia

Rare Earth Deposits & Mining / Rare Earth Exploration, Mining, Processing, & Uses

Matt Birney reports that Northern Minerals Limited is focused on the development of heavy rare earths projects, in particular the element dysprosium. Through the development of its flagship project, Browns Range, Northern Minerals aims to be the next significant dysprosium producer outside of China. Located 160 km south east of Halls Creek in northern Western Australia, the Browns Range Project (the Project) is positioned to become the first significant dysprosium producer outside of China.

Following a review in 2016, Northern Minerals developed a new business plan (ASX announcement 4 February 2016) to support the Project’s pathway to production. The plan separates the Project into three development stages and allows Northern Minerals to test the process and market the mixed RE carbonate product, then develop the Project to bankable feasibility study (BFS) level and finally build the full scale operation.

The deposits can be characterized as breccia-hosted hydrothermal systems with the dominant mineralisation being the rare earth phosphate mineral xenotime; a rich source of dysprosium and other high value HREs. The mineralisation at Browns Range has a high heavy rare earth oxide (HREO) proportion to the total rare earth oxide (TREO), being 87% for the Total Mineral Resource and ranging from 69% at Area 5 up to 96% at Gambit.