Australian Strategic Materials (ASM) has reported encouraging results from heap leach metallurgical testing at the Dubbo Project as part of its Rare Earth Options Assessment (REOA).

Flowchart illustrating the stages of rare earth element processing, including crushing, leaching, impurity removal, refining, solvent extraction, and waste management.

Key highlights

  • Encouraging recoveries for both light and heavy rare earth elements:
  • Neodymium (Nd) recoveries up to 80%
  • Praseodymium (Pr) recoveries up to 85%
  • Dysprosium (Dy) recoveries up to 38%
  • Terbium (Tb) recoveries up to 44%
  • Potential to remove capital-intensive processing steps and simplify the flowsheet.
  • Potential to significantly reduce both capital and operating costs and deliver strong project economics.

These results add to ASM’s confidence in a potential phased development approach, starting with a simple, low-cost heap leach process to produce separated rare earth oxides.

“The results are very encouraging. They show a clear opportunity to simplify the project and strengthen project economics.”

Rowena Smith, Managing Director & CEO

A Heap Leach Scoping Study is now underway and expected to be completed in early Q3 2025.

Read the ASX announcement