Victory Metals has confirmed a unique mineralogical breakthrough at its North Stanmore heavy rare earth project in Western Australia, revealing that the site’s valuable heavy and magnet rare earths are hosted in easily processed secondary phosphate groups.
Detailed TESCAN Integrated Mineral Analyser (TIMA) characterisation carried out by ALS Metallurgy showed that high-value defence and magnet critical elements are predominantly bound within hydrated secondary phosphates, including churchite and rhabdophane, rather than hard-rock primary minerals.
According to the analysis, the combined secondary phosphate groups host 86 per cent of the project’s dysprosium, 82 per cent of its terbium, and 96 per cent of its yttrium.
Furthermore, key magnet light rare earths are equally concentrated, accounting for 88 per cent of praseodymium and 91 per cent of neodymium.
Secondary rare earth phosphates comprise 5.93 per cent of the analysed concentrate by mass, compared with just 1.13 per cent for primary hard-rock minerals like monazite and xenotime combined.
This distinct mineralogy offers a potential processing advantage over conventional hard-rock deposits. While primary monazite and xenotime systems typically require energy-intensive, high-temperature ‘cracking’ steps to break down resistant mineral lattices, prolonged natural weathering at North Stanmore has already transformed the ore into hydrated secondary forms.
Victory Metals’ proposed flowsheet utilises front-end wet screening and flotation rather than complex hard-rock crushing, allowing target minerals to be upgraded before selective leaching.
“These results represent an important advancement for North Stanmore and reinforce the strategic significance of the Project,” said Victory Metals CEO Brendan Clark.
“This mineralogical advantage supports our flotation led beneficiation and selective leaching strategy, subject to ongoing testwork, and provides a strong technical platform to advance the pre-feasibility study and position North Stanmore as a potential long-term supplier to diversified Western rare earth supply chains.”
