Locksley taps Columbia Uni tech to fast-track US rare earths

Locksley Resources has roped in Ivy League technical know-how as it begins sketching out a possible “mine to market” route for rare earths from its Mojave project, which abuts MP Materials’ Mountain Pass rare earths mine project in California.

The company says its collaboration with Columbia University is figuring ways to recover, separate and turn rare earths into usable forms – work it believes could suit the bastnaesite-style mineral systems, similar to those which occur at its El Campo prospect.

Bastnaesite-style mineralisation simply means the valuable rare earth elements are mainly locked inside a mineral called bastnaesite. This mineral commonly forms in carbonatite rocks and is one of the key natural hosts for high-value magnet metals such as neodymium and praseodymium.

Locksley says Columbia’s investigation has so far sketched out conceptual pathways for bastnaesite-rich ores, covering leaching options, pre-concentration to lift rare earth levels in the leachate, separation steps and electrified metallisation routes.

‘Importantly, this work is being progressed in parallel with maiden exploration at El Campo.’

Locksley Resources managing director and chief executive officer Kerrie Matthews

The objective is to identify a cleaner, simpler processing route that could make life easier downstream and give future development studies an improved starting point.

On the mineral detection side, the university team is developing a spectroscopic method to quickly identify and map rare earths in carbonatite material, which is now being fine-tuned using Locksley’s own samples.

At the downstream end, the collaboration has also progressed its review of molten salt electrolysis as an alternative to conventional carbon-based thermal reduction, with an added focus on recovering and recycling salts inside the process loop.

Locksley has stressed that work is still in the research and development stage but says it is a realistic means of pressure-testing real-world processing options while exploration at Mojave gathers pace.

Locksley Resources managing director and chief executive officer Kerrie Matthews said: “Locksley’s collaboration with Columbia University is providing us with access to advanced research into rare earth recovery, separation and metallisation pathways. The work completed to date is supporting our understanding of potential processing routes for our carbonatite-related mineral systems.”

This latest update follows hot on the heels of underground mapping at the company’s historic Desert Antimony Mine (DAM). This work has sharpened up its drill targeting and flagged a new 10-metre to 15-metre-wide shear corridor dubbed the Beefeater Shear, with assays pending from surface and underground sampling.

For a quick geographical context, Mojave is the encompassing project area, and the DAM is one of the key targets within it. The mine and nearby prospects sit at the sharp end of Locksley’s antimony drilling plans, while other parts of Mojave, including El Campo, are being lined up as the rare earths play.

Two weeks ago, the company also announced that it had kicked off drilling at El Campo with four initial diamond drill holes targeting sheared carbonatite-hosted rare earths mineralisation.

The program will test the depth and lateral continuity of mineralisation along 900m of strike, where surface sampling in old digging previously returned results of up to 12.1 per cent total rare earth oxides (TREO).

Together, the boots-on-ground work and the lab program depict Locksley as chasing both antimony and rare earths across a well-known US critical minerals postcode.

On the rare earths side, next steps include more metallurgical refinement using Locksley samples and further testing of recovery, separation and metallisation techniques.

The company says the outcomes are designed to feed future development studies, including possible pilot-scale pathways, and to align with whatever the drilling comes up with across Mojave.

With the university work now being dialled in using Mojave samples, Locksley is setting itself up to deliver more focused updates by linking the minerals it finds in the ground to how they might be processed and recovered.

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