The drive to forge North American supply chain
Appia seeks to take a slice of Asian giant’s 80-per-cent global share in rare earth elements to develop North American supply chain, as Paul Sinkewicz explains.
If things go as hoped, the 2020 exploration season will unearth some good news for Appia Energy Corp.
The Toronto-based firm is looking for rare earth elements (REE) at Alces Lake, 36 kilometres northeast of Uranium City, in Saskatchewan’s far north.
James Sykes, vice-president of exploration and development with Appia, says the project shows promise. He’s hoping it may eventually change the rare earth element supply landscape for North America.
“It’s a very exciting project that has everything going for it. It has the right mineralogy, it has very high grades and is enriched with critical rare earth elements (neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, terbium),” says Sykes. “It’s just a matter of being one or two good seasons away from actually proving up what we have up at the site.”
Rare earth elements are a suite of 17 elements that, like gold, copper or iron, reside on the periodic table. They are not actually rare, but finding ore deposits and formations that can be mined economically is the challenge.
The elements, with names such as europium and gadolinium, have different qualities that are useful in manufacturing things such as magnets and electronics. Neodymium, for example, has very good magnetic qualities. Rare earth elements can be used as compounds or metals, and are commonly used in things such as lighting, touch screens, cellphones and consumer application magnets.
China foresaw the uses of rare earth elements in the 1980s and developed their industry. Today, the country handles more than 80 per cent of the worldwide supply. In North America, only the Mountain Pass mine in California produces any.
The United States is very interested in developing the rare earth element industry to ease its reliance on China as the world’s primary supplier. Sykes says Canada, and Saskatchewan, could really benefit from developing the industry.
“What we have is a project that has the capabilities to become North America’s second rare earth operation after Mountain Pass. It’s got the potential to be quite large. It’s got high grades — the average is about 16 per cent total rare earth oxide, so that’s considered extremely high.”
Sykes notes that Saskatchewan’s mining industry is experienced at dealing with the environmental circumstances that come with mining radioactive materials, like those associated with rare earth elements.
The province also boasts an incredible resource in the Saskatchewan Research Council’s expertise in the field.
Jack Zhang, business unit manager of mineral processing with the Research Council, says over the past decade they have been working closely with the rare earth element industry to develop new and environmentally sustainable processing technologies.
“During this time, we developed the expertise and capabilities to help the rare earth element industry to both reduce costs and maximize values,” he says. “Through years of experience, SRC has become the leading technology provider of REE testing and analysis.”
Since the Research Council is industry focused, its applied research and development work is usually done together with private exploration and development firms. Companies from around the world leverage its help to develop new and environmentally sustainable technologies. Typically, the Research Council will work with a private firm to first develop a concept. If the concept fits the firm’s development strategy, the two groups will develop a scope of work and a road map to achieve the collectively determined targets.
For Sykes, the team at the Research Council will be critical in first proving the Alces Lake project has legs, and then getting Appia set up for small-scale production.
“We’re hoping to get them started on some metallurgical work, because they’ve got the equipment and the processing facilities and the know-how. Once we prove that we can do it at a small scale, and once we prove up a sizable resource, SRC can help us build a scalable facility at the project site,” says Sykes.
Zhang says the challenge for industry is that there is no complete rare earth elements supply chain in North America. That means there are big gaps between production and final consumption.
“Right now, China dominates not only the production, but also the market,” Zhang says. “To build the REE supply chain in North America, collective efforts are required for the whole industry, from exploration, mining, processing, separation to metal production and alloy production.”
The Saskatchewan Research Council is aiming to become the rare earth element technology hub, to help the industry build supply. There is potential for rare earth element processing in the province to take advantage of the existing uranium industry, Zhang adds.
“We are also working closely with the uranium industry in Saskatchewan to develop new rare earth extraction technologies from the uranium processing waste in order to best utilize the resources and add value for this industry,” he says. “A significant amount of heavy rare earth elements are typically associated with uranium ore bodies.”
The Research Council is trying to make the technology more environmentally sustainable and more selective, with less waste production, Zhang adds.
“The rare earth extraction technology work with the uranium industry also has the potential to make the industry more viable in the province,” he says.
“SRC intends to accelerate the development of the critical supply chain in Saskatchewan and Canada by building a commercial pilot scale REE processing facility in Saskatoon. Once completed, this will provide an important route to market for Saskatchewan and wider Canadian producers.”
The next steps for now will be taking place near that northern Saskatchewan lake, as Appia continues exploration efforts at Alces Lake this summer.
“We still need to prove up our own tonnage,” says Sykes. “We don’t have a resource estimate out yet. We need to work on that for the summer, but I’m hoping that what we have up there, what we’ve seen so far, will certainly lead to far more. We’ve got a huge amount of potential on that ground.”
It’s a very exciting project that has everything going for it . ... It’s just a matter of being one or two good seasons away from actually proving up what we have up at the site.