Consultant IHC Mining is carrying out a detailed testing program to improve the beneficiation and mineral separation processes for rare earths and heavy minerals from Ark Mines’ Sandy Mitchell project.

Ark said the metallurgical analysis would be incorporated into the works program for the detailed prefeasibility study for Sandy Mitchell.

This is scheduled for completion early next year and will also incorporate assay results from a planned drill program aimed at expanding the existing measured resource.

Related: Sandy Mitchell development stacks up for Ark Mines

“Timing is everything in mining, and we continue to believe that Sandy Mitchell can deliver a near-term large-scale rare earth mine to the market within two years,” Ark managing director Ben Emery said.

“IHC are already making great progress on a very thorough test-work program that has been well thought out to cover a wide array of processing options.

“This advanced metallurgy work is expected to further strengthen our commercial development strategy for Sandy Mitchell, by confirming the applicability of low-cost downstream processing to convert the mineral sands into a range of end-user products that are in demand across global rare earth and heavy mineral markets.”

The process flow sheet is being designed to produce the following products from the surface sand at Sandy Mitchell:

• Rare earth oxides including magnet rare earths and critical rare earths
• Zircon with accessory hafnium
• Accessory titanium oxides
• Garnet

The measured mineral resource estimate for the site stands at 71.8 Mt at 1732.7 ppm monazite equivalent, calculated using a 700ppm MzEq cut-off grade.