Name of the Project
Makuutu rare earths project.

Location
Uganda, 120 km east of Kampala.

Project Owner/s
Ionic Rare Earths (IonicRE). The company currently owns 51% of Makuutu; however, it will increase its stake to 60% on the completion of the feasibility study before October 2022 and has a pre-emptive right over the remaining 40% stake.

Project Description
Makuutu is an ionic adsorption clay (IAC) deposit. IAC deposits contain rare-earth elements (REE) ionically bonded to the clay rather than existing as primary minerals in the ore.

A base case scoping study has demonstrated the potential for Makuutu to become a sustainable, long-life operation, supplying critical rare-earth oxide (REO) and heavy rare-earth oxide (HREO) to global markets and generating strong financial returns while delivering significant social and economic benefits for the local communities.

The study proposes openpit mining over an initial 11-year mine life, with the IAC run-of-mine (RoM) fed into a modular heap-leach plant, where the REO is recovered from the IAC mineralisation using salt desorption to produce a mixed rare earth carbonate product.

The first module will process 2.50-million tonnes a year of RoM and produce about 800 t/y REO equivalent product.

Additional modules will be added in years 2, 4, 6 and 9 to increase the plant throughput up to 12.50-million tonnes by Year 10.

Potential Job Creation
Not stated.

Net Present Value/Internal Rate of Return
The project has an after-tax net present value, at an 8% discount rate, of $321-million and an internal rate of return of 38%, with a payback of about five years.

Capital Expenditure
Total capital expenditure (capex) is estimated at $301-million.

Preproduction capex, including contingency, is estimated at $89-million for Module 1, including the mining fleet.

The Module 2 expansion in Year 2 is estimated at $40-million.

The expansion from Module 2 to 5, estimated at about $172-million, will be funded from project cash flow.

Planned Start/End Date
Production is expected in 2024.

Latest Developments
IonicRE is planning on drilling an additional 2 100 m as part of its Phase 4 infill drilling programme at the Makuutu project, increasing the total planned drilling to 7 800 m.

The company has three drill rigs on site, which have completed 5 200 m of drilling to date.

The additional drilling is intended to increase resource confidence from inferred to indicated classification on the large resources Area 1, which currently has an inferred resource of 96-million tonnes. The company intends for the indicated and measured resource base to be more than 250-million tonnes.

Following the drilling programme, IonicRE will progress to completing a feasibility study and, following this, submit a mining licence application in the second half of 2022.

Further, IonicRE is evaluating the development of a standalone rare earth separation and refining facility for the downstream processing of mixed rare-earth carbonate (MREC) product from its Makuutu rare earths project.

The refining and processing facility will produce refined critical REO and HREO.

The scale of the separation and refinery facility is likely to be initially set at about 4 000 t/y REO equivalent feed, reflecting an alignment to the peak projected production capacity at Makuutu.

Given the potential for Makuutu to support long-life, low-cost REO production for 27 years, and recent exploration results defining further scale for significant additional growth in resources, the development of a standalone separation and refining asset provides greater long-term strategic importance and upside for the company, MD Tim Harrison has said.

Harrison has added that the timeline to production from Makuutu remains firm, with production targeted for 2024. As the company ramps up Makuutu over the rest of the decade until 2030, IonicRE also wants to ensure that it “can build separation and refinery capacity to match that scale of production proposed at Makuutu. To meet those goals, now is the time to start this activity”.

The proposed separation and refinery facility will be fully owned by IonicRE and will enable the company to increase payability attained from the MREC basket produced at Makuutu to 100% payability for refined individual REO products.

Key Contracts, Suppliers and Consultants
None stated.

Contact Details for Project Information
IonicRE, tel +61 8 9481 2555.