Donald Rare Earth & Mineral Sands Project
Victoria, Australia
The Donald Rare Earth & Mineral Sands Project represents an important new source of global supply at a time of growing demand and challenged supply, with the maturing of established production sources and a lack of new projects coming online. Donald represents a Tier One deposit in terms of scale, with an expected mine life of at least 58 years and the value of mineral assemblage, notably the rare earth and zircon content.
Project Overview
The Donald Rare Earth and Mineral Sands Project has a total Mineral Resource of 5.8 billion tonnes of ore, at an average heavy mineral (HM) grade of 3.2%. The  Project consists of the Donald and Jackson deposits. Within the Donald deposit area (MIN5532 and RL2002), there are Ore Reserves of 825 million tonnes (Mt) of ore, with an average HM grade of 4.5%. This equates to an approximate, in-situ ore body of 37Mt of heavy minerals, including 6.6Mt of zircon, 10.5Mt of ilmenite, 10.5Mt of higher titanium content products of rutile and leucoxene, as well as a significant rare earth element component of 724kt.
Ore Reserves & Mineral Resources
The Donald Rare Earth and Mineral Sands Project is a globally significant, Tier 1 source of mineral sands, with considerable contents of in-situ titanium dioxide, zircon and rare earth elements.
Location
The Donald Rare Earth & Mineral Sands project is located in regional Victoria and encompasses a total tenement area of 426km2. The area is mainly cleared land used for cropping and grazing and is located close to supporting infrastructure.Â
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Geology
The Donald and Jackson deposits are WIM style heavy mineral sands accumulations, amenable to a staged, long life mining operation.
Evaluation & De-Risking
The Donald Rare Earth and Minerals Sands Project has been subject to detailed evaluation over many years, with all main regulatory approvals completed or well advanced.
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Community Overview
Astron is committed to making a positive contribution to the community, economy and environment in Minyip and the surrounding area.
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Phased Development Approach
Phase 2 operations will be carried out on RL2002 to the north and south of MIN5532. Phase 2a operations involve a duplication of Phase 1 activities, approximately doubling ore throughput and production of HMC and REEC. Phase 2b involves the construction of a mineral separation plant (MSP) to process HMC into final downstream zircon and titania products. The MSP has a throughput of 15Mtpa with expected production rates of 84.6ktpa of premium zircon, 8.9ktpa of standard zircon and 260.2ktpa of titania.
Phase 3 represents a potential further upside to mining throughput. Mining activities are expected to extend northwards from the current mining licence, and potentially be undertaken in the Jackson deposit. Downstream processing options such as rare earth cracking facilities and synthetic rutile plants are envisioned as the Company captures more value over time. Phase 3 is subject to further regulatory approvals.
Key Activities for 2023
Donald Rare Earths & Mineral Sands Project
Ilmenite ore and filter press with seperation spirals in the background
Mining, Concentrating, Mineral Separation & Rehabilitation
Mineral sands mining involves four main stages: mining, wet concentration, mineral separation and rehabilitation. Mining can be performed either by dry mining methods (employing scrapers, dozers and excavators, typical for dunal deposits) or a wet mining process (employing floating dredges, typical for large unconsolidated deposits).
Mining
Concentrating
Mineral Separation
Rehabilitation
Mining
Mining
The Donald Project will utilise an open-pit dry-mining operation where ore and waste will be mined using excavators and trucks. Mining activities will be undertaken by a mining contractor. Run of Mine (ROM) ore will be stockpiled at the Mining Unit Plant (MUP) and fed via front end loader into the MUP where it will be scrubbed, screened, slurried and pumped to the Wet Concentrator Plant (WCP) for processing into HMC product. The MUP is designed to be relocated as it moves along the designated mining path. The average strip ratio over the life of the mine is 2.2:1 (1.6:1 for Phase 1).
Concentrating
Concentrating
The concentration process converts slurried ore into HMC product, containing the valuable heavy mineral (VHM) components.Â
The first stage of the treatment plant involves the use of a trommel to attrition the ore and remove oversize material. The remaining ore is gravity separated via a custom designed, five stage spiral circuit to produce a 90%-95% HMC. This leads to a flotation process using a conventional non-toxic reagent which produces a rare earth element concentrate (REEC) and a HMC containing zircon and titanium bearing mineral products.
Mineral Separation
Mineral Separation
Astron does not intend to undertake mineral separation on-site during Phase 1 development. The project will instead produce HMC and REEC products for toll processing or direct offtake. Astron has a mineral separation facility in Yingkou, China that could be modified to process Donald HMC. Investigations are underway to determine the feasibility of this approach.
Phase 2b will introduce mineral separation capabilities with the construction of the MSP. This will include a Wet-High-Intensive Magnet (WHIMs) Plant, and dry separation plant. This will allow the HMC to be processed on-site into the refined products of premium zircon, secondary zircon and a combined titania.
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Rehabilitation
Rehabilitation
The nature of the mining activity (open pit, shallow and continuous) enables progressive rehabilitation of the disturbed area, gradually returning the land to its original form.
Astron seek to utilise the best practices in mineral sands rehabilitation techniques, employing suitable environmental consultants and monitoring long term trends in land usage and productivity.
The Donald test-pit, excavated during 2018, has been subsequently rehabilitated back to the original landform. Astron will continue to monitor its progress through soil testing and crop yield data analysis by an agronomist.
