Shot-firing in the Wolverine pit and first ore delivery to a ROM pad has occurred as development of an airstrip at the site, about 160km south-east of Halls Creek, continues. Wolverine is one of six rare earth oxide deposits at Browns Range, containing about 4.97 million tonnes grading 0.86% total REO of the project total mineral resource of some 8.98Mt of 0.63% TREO.

Northern Minerals is among the standouts on what has become a vastly shrunken list of legitimate challengers to China’s global heavy rare earths market hegemony. The key reason it is an exception hasn’t changed in the six or so years since the company and its Browns Range appeared on the market’s radar in the wake of a successful exploration program.

And that is the hard-rock xenotime-hosted heavy rare earth (HRE) minerals – rare in occurrence, indeed, around the world – that are expected to give Northern Minerals a vital edge in its bid to become an influential player in a profitable, and growing, segment of the often maligned rare earth supply sector.

Bauk says Browns Range’s significant resource size and grade put in on the international HRE map, but its “best in class HRE” composition has cemented its position.

“Even when the REE boom was running at full throttle there were few players that could offer this mineralisation and like some Agatha Christie story, ‘now there is one’,” noted market commentator Chris Ecclestone, from New York-based investment bank Hallgarten & Company, observed in a recent note on Northern Minerals. Ecclestone was on the money when he went “long” with a 2011 prediction about Browns Range and its “thinking man’s REE mineralisation” elevating its development prospects.

Hallgarten recently repeated the “long” strategy call on Northern Minerals, which is entering the planned stage one phase of Browns Range’s long-term, three-phase delivery plan with establishment of the A$60 million pilot plant and trial mining operation.

The company is aiming to annually produce about 49,000kg of dysprosium, in 590,000kg TREO contained in a mixed RE carbonate, from the 60,000tpa pilot plant, as it de-risks the process, aspects of the mining operation, and also the path to key markets.

“No question if prices continue to go up the [pilot plant is] going to generate financial benefits,” Bauk says.

“But this is all about demonstrating the proof of concept to establish confidence in the market that this is an important new source of HREs and establish ourselves as a reliable producer from Browns Range.

“At the moment HREs come mainly from ionic clays – that is the primary mineral type in China – and getting it from a hard-rock xenotime-hosted mineral is something that hasn’t been done before.

“So being able to demonstrate to the market that we can deliver an on-spec product will give the market a lot of confidence.

“Laboratory-scale is interesting, but to really demonstrate that the process works we need something of the scale of this pilot plant.

“From a pragmatic viewpoint, too, the full-scale operation is a $329 million exercise for the capital build, it’s a two-year lead time, and in this current market trying to finance something like that is, I think I can comfortably say, near impossible.

“And so this is a way to really eliminate as many risk factors in our project as possible so investors can get a clear view of the answers to those critical technical questions: does the orebody behave; will you get the recoveries you’ve forecast; are your costs lined up with what you think you can achieve; can you produce on-spec product; and what is your pricing realisation for your product?

“All of those things will be proven at a reasonable scale.”

The first consignment of the modular pilot plant is expected to leave Shanghai in China, where it is being fabricated, in September and should arrive on Australian shores by the end of October. Northern Minerals expects to reach practical completion of the facility by the end of the second quarter next year, with commissioning in the September quarter.

All going well, it will be shipping its first HRE concentrates around that time.

Results of pilot plant processing, and mining, will also be key inputs into Northern Minerals’ bankable feasibility study and stage-two development plan for Browns Range, when it will aim to reduce costs, boost production, increase ore reserves, and zero in on production of a premium RE carbonate product.

Phase three moves to a full-scale plant on the back of successful outcomes from the initial phases.

Northern Minerals has Sinosteel Equipment & Engineering overseeing the pilot plant build; respected WA mining contractor MACA on earthworks; and another local contractor, Primero, arriving on site in September to prepare for arrival of the plant. It will then work on the project through commissioning.

Northern Minerals has a sales agreement signed with China’s Lianyugang Zeyu New Materials Sales, one of five major vertically integrated HRE companies in China, covering 100% of Browns Range stage one output.

Perhaps propitiously, dysprosium oxide prices have risen about 4% in the past month or so.

Terbium prices are up 70% year-to-date.

“What we’ve really seen this year has been the resurgence in magnetic materials,” Bauk says.

“In terms of volume the biggest ones by far are the neodymium and praseodymium, which the light rare earth companies tend to have, and that’s been really what Lynas [Corporation] has recovered on. 

“And then attached to that is dysprosium and terbium.”

Northern Minerals’ focus on producing a high-purity dysprosium-rich product via its two-stage process flowsheet (beneficiation/hydromet) will make it an important niche HRE supplier in the growing market for DyNdFeB (dysprosium neodymium iron-boron) magnets used in clean energy and high-tech applications.

Bauk says while electric vehicle demand has reached a tipping point with the price disparity between EVs and traditional petrol-powered cars dissolving faster than anyone thought it would, and the likes of Volvo signalling the end of its combustion-motor vehicle production, other markets could also expand dramatically in future as Chinese production of HREs wanes in the face of environmental pressures and reserve depletion.

He notes Japan’s Shin-Etsu recently raised the prospect of an unforeseen surge in magnet demand from the robotics sector.

“If you go back to 2010 and what people were forecasting in the way of growth in consumption of smart phones and tablets, and compare it to what has actually happened, those forecasts were out by a factor of 2-3 times.

“There is a lot more REE and other materials being used in those devices than what we thought only 6-7 years ago.

“The world is certainly progressing on EVs. It’s no longer about consumers being trendy if you take away the price differential.

“I was in China last week and saw first-hand how determined they are in their pursuit of this whole electrification focus. For them, with their pollution challenges, EVs are just an absolute no-brainer.

“In Beijing if you’ve got an EV you are allowed to drive it seven days a week. For a traditional vehicle it’s six days a week.

“So we are already seeing restrictions on the use of traditional cars and vehicles.

“The change is coming a lot faster than people thought it would.”