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Commerce Resources successfully completes rare earth pilot plant trials

23rd April 2015

By: Henry Lazenby

Creamer Media Deputy Editor: North America

  

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TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – The first phase in a series of flowsheet pilot plant tests on material from Commerce Resources 100%-owned Ashram project has been completed, the Quebec-focused rare earths project developer reported this week.

The TSX-V-listed firm said the pilot plant had produced enough bulk quantities of flotation concentrate that would be used for downstream processing, to produce several kilograms of mixed rare earth concentrate.

Commerce also succeeded in demonstrating that the flotation plant could continually perform to specification.

The company processed about 4.3 t of Ashram-deposit bulk sample material, collected in 2012, through a 6 inch flotation column on a continuous basis to produce about 1.4 t of flotation concentrate for downstream processing.

Colorado-based Hazen Research operated the pilot plant in collaboration with Eriez Flotation Division, based in Pennsylvania.

"The completion of the flotation pilot plant for the Ashram deposit is a significant milestone for the project. We now look forward to the downstream piloting that will begin shortly, as well as to the production of several kilograms of mixed rare earth concentrate,” president Chris Grove said.

The pilot plant comprised three main circuits, including grinding, reagent conditioning and flotation.

Commerce in 2012 completed a positive preliminary economic assessment on the Ashram rare-earth project, in northern Quebec. Earlier this year, it filed a revised technical report that showed strong cash flow from a 4 000 t/d openpit operation with a 25-year mine life, including a pretax and prefinance net present value at a 10% discount rate of $2.32-billion, a pretax/prefinance internal rate of return of 44% and a pretax/prefinance payback period of 2.25 years.

The economic evaluation was based on the March 2012 resource estimate, which used a base-case geologic cutoff grade of 1.25% total rare earth oxide (TREO) and provided 29.3-million tonnes of measured and indicated resource, as well as 219.8-million tonnes of inferred resource, averaging 1.88% TREO.

The rare-earth elements at Ashram occurred in simple and well-understood mineralogy, being mainly in the mineral monazite and to a lesser extent in bastnaesite and xenotime. These minerals dominated the currently known commercial extraction processes for rare earths.

In March, the company reported that it had achieved a significant 80% reduction in the consumption of three main flotation reagents in bench-scale development testwork for the Ashram project.

Edited by Tracy Hancock
Creamer Media Contributing Editor

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