Curtin University is thrilled to continue our partnership with Venture Minerals in support of their push to become the next rare earth element producer of significance in Australia. The company announced in an ASX update this week that data collected at the company’s flagship 40 km2 Jupiter rare earth discovery, based out of Western Australia’s Mid-West region, would now inform the design of metallurgical processing routes and align them with Jupiter’s style of mineralisation.
The large deposits at the Jupiter and Brothers Projects show high potential to further strengthen Australia’s sovereign supply of these critical minerals required for electric vehicles, wind energy and defence applications. However, clay-hosted rare-earth element (REE) mineralisation such as that at Jupiter and Brothers has never before been economically developed in Australia.
To help solve this development challenge, Venture Minerals has engaged Curtin’s world-class research capability combining talented mineralogists from the School of Earth and Planetary Science and mineral processing experts from the WA School of Mines with funding support from the Resources Technology and Critical Minerals Trailblazer Program.
Initial metallurgical testwork will focus on removing coarse quartz, iron oxides, and feldspar via a combination of industry standard physical separation methods, to upgrade the clay-hosted rare earth mineralisation. This initial work is designed to assess the potential for creating a beneficiated REE product with significantly higher grades for extractive metallurgical testwork, which will in turn allow greater flexibility in extractive process routes and potentially result in significant cost savings.
Of the announcement, Managing Director Philippa Leggat said:
“We are focussed on making smart decisions that give Jupiter the best chance of being a successful mining operation in the future. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to rare earths, and that means doing the work to build a meaningful foundation, which is particularly important with a project as big as Jupiter. We have completed an extensive resource drill-out across the 40 km2 area and have taken the time to understand our mineralisation, so that we can make decisions based on data. That process is ongoing and allows us to incorporate data as we receive assays or test results, and as our knowledge grows.”
Curtin and Venture are excited to be working closely together to better understand these clay minerals and unlock their value for Australia.
