Critica claims Australia’s biggest clay-hosted rare earths discovery

Critica Limited has laid claim to Australia’s biggest clay-hosted rare earths discovery after revealing a mammoth 1.8 billion tonne maiden global resource grading 1700 parts per million (ppm) total rare earth oxides (TREO) at its Jupiter project, which is part of the company’s bigger Brothers project in Western Australia.

The whopping resource, prepared by independent global consultancy SRK Consulting, includes a priority target of 500 million tonnes running at 2200ppm TREO. With a remarkable cut-off grade of 1800ppm, the block is earmarked as high-grade.

Management said the near-surface and highly consistent nature of the globally significant deposit has opened a myriad of options when it comes to future processing and development scenarios.

The maiden resource has come hot on the heels of first pass metallurgical testing that delivered an 830 per cent uplift in grade using a simple, room-temperature flotation process.

Test work run over multiple samples of Jupiter’s mineralisation managed to lift an initial grade of 1430ppm TREO into a remarkable high-grade concentrate of 13,310ppm TREO.

When 94.5pc of the material was removed, the remaining concentrated product still ran at an impressive rare earth elements recovery rate of more than 50pc without being further optimised.

Critica is continuing to run disciplined testing on the mineralised material to boost recoveries, helped by a well-regarded overseas specialist with experience in the metallurgical idiosyncrasies that Jupiter has thrown up.

While Jupiter is not a classic ionic clay deposit - favoured because of the simple processing required - it is clay-hosted.

The company says because of its enormous size, grade and proximity to major infrastructure, there is every chance of finding a relatively cheap processing solution, when the metallurgists have solved the puzzle.

It is incredibly exciting to be able to unveil Australia’s premier clay hosted rare earths deposit – the numbers speak for themselves. Our maiden resource represents a major milestone that we have, rather remarkably, delivered in just over a year from announcing the discovery in November 2023.

Rare earth elements are crucial in producing the high-performance magnets used in electric vehicles, wind turbines and advanced electronics. Jupiter contains a highly valuable subset of these elements, including neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium, which account for about 23pc of the total rare earth elements.

With $6 million in the bank as at the end of December and most of the costly drilling now completed, Critica appears to remain in rare financial health. It will move forward in the next few months with advanced metallurgical testing and some additional targeted drilling across several satellite deposits at Jupiter.

To add to its near-term funding options, Critica has a tungsten-tin asset that has been languishing on the company’s book for an extraordinary 18 years and is currently up for sale. It will likely be courting some sudden interest from potential buyers for the project, after China’s recent decision to ban the export of tungsten among other metals in retaliation for US tariffs.

The Mount Lindsay project in Tasmania hosts one of the biggest undeveloped tin deposits in the world, containing more than 80,000t of the metal as well as a significant 13,000t tungsten resource.

With China determined to retain its tungsten for domestic use, 80pc of the global supply of the grey metal has instantly evaporated, leaving western nations scrambling for alternative sources.

Critica has had a remarkably quick turnaround in fortunes recently.

The starting gun was fired started after Leggat, the then newly appointed managing director, decided to pivot the company by focusing its efforts on the Jupiter grounds – a project which had been largely sitting in the “to do” file gathering dust.

Between selling its Riley iron ore assets in Tasmania, bringing two new sticky institutional investors onto the register with a $3.5m investment and raising a further $6m in a placement, the company was able to top up the bank balance with $12m in new funds.

Critica then set about drilling 40,000m of exploration holes into Jupiter, resulting in the biggest ever clay-hosted discovery of rare earths in Australia.

All of this was achieved in little more than 12 months and for just a bit more than $6m in exploration spend.

Punters are likely to be hoping for a similar repeat performance in the coming year after the share price rallied 120pc in 2024. Critica seems to be having a red-hot crack at unlocking Jupiter’s metallurgical code – if it succeeds the punters are unlikely to be disappointed.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@wanews.com.au