Name and Location
Zandkopsdrift rare-earth element project, Northern Cape, South Africa.

Client
Frontier Rare Earths and Korea Resources Corporation (Kores).

Project Description
Zandkopsdrift has one of the biggest total rare-earth oxide (REO) grades and the highest-grade REOs of significantly advanced rare earths deposits outside China.

Envisioned is a standalone opencast mine, which will be mined by conventional free-dig and/or drill, blast and haul techniques, with minimal drilling and blasting required. The steady-state mining production target is one-million tons a year and the total separated rare-earth oxides target production rate is 20 000 t/y.

Infrastructure associated with the mine and process plant includes the upgrade of existing district roads from the surrounding towns to the mine.

Frontier will supply water to the mine from demineralised water, piped 35 km from a desalination plant.

Turbogenerators will supply power using the on-site exothermic reactions within an on-site sulphuric acid production plant.

The desalination plant will be powered by diesel generators and the Saldanha separation plant will be supplied by State-owned power utility Eskom.

Value
$910-million, which includes capital expenditure requirements for the Zandkopsdrift mine, related infrastructure and services, land purchases, mine closure and rehabilitation provision, the upgrading of local district roads, the provision of the social and labour plan, as well as the Saldanha separation plant, with its related infrastructure and services.

Duration
Along with its strategic partner, Kores, Frontier intends to start rare earths production in 2016, with a target production capacity of 20 000 t/y of separated REOs.

Latest Developments
In the fourth quarter of 2013, Frontier reported that good progress had been made on the various studies required for the prefeasibility study (PFS), which covers all aspects of the proposed Zandkopsdrift development, including the design of the Zandkopsdrift processing plant and Saldanha separation plant, power, water, roads, tailings, mining, reagent supply, logistics and environmental management.

The company indicated that a review of the PFS had identified several areas where potential engineering design and process improvements could have a significant positive impact on the capital and operating cost estimates for the PFS, with further testwork to be undertaken in the fourth quarter of 2013 and the first quarter of 2014 to validate these improvements.

This testwork has been completed, confirming several of the proposed engineering design and process improvements. As a result, several changes have been made to the PFS flow sheets.

The revised flow sheet for the Zandkopsdrift processing plant, which has now been finalised for the PFS, comprises:
• A front-end crushing and milling circuit. The selected milling technology produces a sharply defined particle-size distribution, with downstream handling benefits.
• An impurity preleach circuit, which provides a significant mass reduction with low rare-earth losses, and a consequent reduction in capital and operating costs of the cracking and other downstream processes.
• An acid-contacting circuit, in which concentrated sulphuric acid is mixed with the feed material to produce a free-flowing feed for the cracking circuit.
• A cracking circuit – in which the prepared feed is baked at higher temperatures, decomposing the rare-earth minerals recovers sulphur as sulphur dioxide and sulphur trioxide, which subsequently is returned to the sulphuric acid plant. Many of the impurities are stabilised, which prevents them from leaching with the rare earths in the water leach circuit.
• A water leach circuit, in which the calcine is water leached to produce a pregnant leach solution (PLS) containing rare-earth elements (REEs) and residual unstabilised impurities.
• An impurity removal circuit, in which the PLS is purified by removal of the residual unstabilised impurities through precipitation and filtration.
• A REE precipitation circuit, in which the REEs are precipitated from the purified PLS as a mixed rare earth product that is suitable for processing through a conventional solvent extraction separation plant.
• A final stage of waste neutralisation and disposal to the tailings storage facility on site.

The remaining engineering design work for the PFS is scheduled to start in this quarter, with this work expected for completion and the results of the PFS announced in the fourth quarter of 2014.

Key Contracts and Suppliers
Venmyn SNC-Lavalin (preliminary economic assessment); Mintek and SGS Mineral Services (metallurgical flow sheet development); the MSA group (resource estimation); Sound Mining Solutions (mine design and schedule); Epoch Resources (design of tailings disposal facility); SNC Lavalin (separation plant engineering design and capital operating cost estimates) and DRA (engineering design and operating-cost estimates for Zandkopsdrift).

On Budget and on Time?
Project is on schedule

Contact Details for Project Information
Frontier Rare Earths (Luxembourg), tel +352 208 80249 or email ir@frontierrareearths.com.