Northern Minerals on-track with R&D to ramp-up Browns Range Heavy Rare Earth Project restart

Northern Minerals Ltd (ASX:NTU) is on-track with plans to ramp-up the restart of operations at Browns Range Heavy Rare Earth Project in the Kimberley region of WA after the resumption of research and development test-work in August.

R&D test-work recommenced with the partial restart of operations after being disrupted for five months due to Commonwealth biosecurity measures in response to COVID-19, which required the plant to be placed into care and maintenance.

In a company activity update, chief executive officer Mark Tory said Northern Minerals planned to restart the hydrometallurgical plant test-work in the December quarter as part of a three-year pilot assessment of the economic and technical feasibility of a commercial, larger-scale development at Browns Range extracting rare earths from hard rock xenotime ore.*Exploration planned*

Northern Minerals is also finalising plans for an aggressive exploration program to drill around 16,500 metres across its Browns Range tenements before the end of June 2021.

The company has allocated a budget of up $5 million for the program in financial year 2021 and anticipates drill rigs being mobilised to site in October to test greenfields targets across the tenement as well as follow-up on previous drilling at Dazzler and Banshee deposits.

Exploration is focused on increasing the mineral resource and the life of mine potential at Browns Range.

These results, along with the findings from pilot plant test-work, will feed into a new feasibility study to evaluate the potential for a commercial, larger-scale heavy rare earths production project in the Kimberley.