Appia Rare Earths & Uranium Corp. – a Canadian publicly-listed company in the rare earth element and uranium sectors – has announced that it has extracted a bulk sample from the Alces Lake discovery and will ship it to CanmetMINING in the next few days. CanmetMINING, a science and technology branch of the Lands and Metals sector of Natural Resources Canada, is a world-class leader in the development and deployment of green mining innovation technologies.
The primary focus for the test program will be to optimize and enhance the development of an Alces Lake Project flowsheet and to confirm other material testwork that has been previously conducted by other parties on the Alces Lake monazite. The Alces Lake project is located in northern Saskatchewan, the same provincial jurisdiction that is developing a “first-of-its-kind” rare earth processing facility in Canada.
Federal R&D assistance is provided through a collaboration agreement with CanmetMINING, under their Critical Minerals Research, Development and Demonstration program. This program targets research and development for upstream critical minerals processing and aims to stimulate the development of battery and permanent magnet value chains in Canada.
The test work is anticipated to include grinding, flotation, magnetic separation, ore sorting, and dense medium separation (DMS). CanmetMINING scientists will work closely with Appia and its consultants for mineral processing. The objective is to design and execute a comprehensive and optimal testing approach that will produce a high-grade rare earth mineral concentrate from the Alces Lake mineralized material.
A total of 0.9 tonnes of mineralized material was extracted from the Alces Lake Deposit and 0.6 tonnes will be shipped to SGS Canada’s Lakefield facility in Ontario for crushing and sizing ahead of test work. The remainder of the sample will be shipped at a later date. Upon completion of the preparatory work, the sample will be shipped to CanmetMINING and the test programs will begin.