Australian rare earth element (REE) company, Hastings Technology Metals, has agreed to acquire full ownership of the Yangibana joint venture (JV) tenements.

According to the agreement, Hastings will pay US$6.2M to acquire the remaining 30% stake in the Yangibana tenements from Cadence Minerals and its subsidiary Mojito Resources. Consequently, the transaction provides Cadence with equity exposure to 100% of the Yangibana REE project via its equity holding in Hastings. While Hastings becomes the sole owner of Yangibana, it will also see an immediate increase in mineral resources of 2.3Mt and a 0.73Mt increase in ore reserve from the new tenements. According to the company, the new reserves will raise the initial mine life of the project by one year to a total life of 16 years and provide an opportunity to extend and increase current mineral resources.

Located in Western Australia’s Gascoyne region, the Yangibana project hosts several REE deposits across the tenement holdings. The deposits consist primarily of the light rare earth elements (LREEs) hosted in monazite, including neodymium and praseodymium, which most projects now highlight to gain traction from the NdFeB permanent magnet demand narrative.

The planned operation at Yangibana includes the production of a monazite concentrate that will then be transported to Hasting’s hydrometallurgical plant to produce a mixed rare earth carbonate (MREC). The plant is expected to produce 15,000tpy of MREC with production slated to begin in 2024. While Yangibana is at the forefront of Hasting’s operations, the company is also progressing a mining lease application over the Brockman heavy rare earth (HREE) and rare metals (niobium and zirconium) project in Western Australia.

Currently, Australia sits among the top-three REE mine producers in the world outside China with around 8-9% of global mine output. While currently supply is limited to mineral concentrates, several projects in Australia are looking to advance to MREC stages – which will still need further refining elsewhere to recover separated REEs. Project Blue estimates that if the projects by Lynas and Iluka get off the ground that Australia will be able to ramp up MREC supply to account for 10% of global feedstock to separated REEs, and as much as 60% of sellable MREC (non-integrated) over the next five years.