Source : THE AGE NEWS
By James Pearson
ASX-listed Critica Limited has pocketed a cool $1.05 million refund from the Australian Tax Office under the Research and Development Tax Incentive Program.
The funds will be used to turbocharge the company’s plans to push ahead with its exciting rare earths project in Western Australia’s Mid West region.
The refund has reinforced the company’s already solid cash kitty, which sat at $6M at the end of December. The funds will directly fuel the company’s metallurgical test work and satellite drilling programs at its wholly owned Brothers clay-hosted rare earth project, including its flagship Jupiter prospect.
The extra cash injection appears to have landed at exactly the right time as the company continues to push forward with studies to back up some eyebrow-raising findings revealed earlier this year and works towards producing a mixed rare earth carbonate product.
Critica Limited has scored a $1.05M R&D tax refund under the Australian research and development tax incentive program to advance the company’s Jupiter rare earths project in Western Australia’s Mid West region.
‘The metallurgical workstreams in progress are targeted to build on the outstanding initial beneficiation results we announced earlier this year.’
Critica Limited managing director Philippa Leggat
Those initial results showed that material from Jupiter could be upgraded by 830 per cent. Test work on a sample from Jupiter’s mineralisation has delivered a stunning result, turning an initial grade of 1430 parts per million (ppm) total rare earth oxides (TREO) into a turbocharged concentrate grading 13,310ppm TREO.
The company said the simple flotation process used managed to supercharge the grade to more than nine times the original head grade, highlighting just how easy the clay-hosted deposit could be to process.
Notably, even after stripping out 94.5 per cent of the bulk material, the remaining concentrate still posted an impressive rare earths recovery rate of more than 50 per cent before any further optimisation.
The combination of a big uplift in the grade and a reduction in waste could dramatically sharpen future project economics and reshape the company’s value proposition.
Critica Limited managing director Philippa Leggat said: “The metallurgical workstreams in progress are targeted to build on the outstanding initial beneficiation results we announced earlier this year. The results demonstrated the potential to upgrade representative Jupiter mineralisation by almost ten times while reducing overall material mass by approximately 95%.”
The Brothers project – and Critica’s Jupiter discovery in particular – have quickly emerged as standout clay-hosted rare earths plays in Australia’s booming critical minerals space.
Critica recently published a huge 1.8 billion tonne maiden global resource grading 1700ppm TREO at Jupiter.
The eye-watering resource, which was crunched by global heavyweight SRK Consulting, includes a hefty 500 million tonnes sitting at a high-grade 2200ppm TREO, using an impressive cut-off grade of 1800ppm.
Management says the near-surface and remarkably consistent nature of the globally significant deposit has thrown open a world of options for future processing and development.
Critica says the R&D refund and the broader Australian Government support for early-stage project development work were strong endorsements of the company’s efforts to create and protect intellectual property around rare earths processing.
Given recent geopolitical events, which have seen a dramatic adjustment in the supply chain for critical metals, the work is also in line with a broader government push to shore up alternative supply chains for key ingredients used in electric vehicles, renewable energy and defence technologies.
With a beefed-up balance sheet, compelling early results in hand and a clear runway for more technical breakthroughs, Critica looks poised to punch well above its weight in the race to feed the world’s insatiable appetite for critical minerals.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: mattbirney@bullsnbears.com.au
