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Victory Metals (ASX:VTM) has marked another milestone at its North Stanmore rare earths project in Western Australia, showing a huge reduction in leach time and significant grade increases.
According to the company’s recent quarterly activities report, approximately 80 percent of rare earths were leached within 30 minutes compared to the previous four-hour assumption.
“By adopting a 30-minute leach duration, Victory will avoid unnecessary
consumption of reagents, resulting in a massive operational saving,” the company said.
North Stanmore is located approximately 6 kilometres north of Cue and has a JORC compliant resource of 321 million tonnes, supporting a mine life of over 60 years.
To date, the project has produced mixed rare earth oxide MREO (containing 94 percent rare earth elements), mixed rare earth carbonate MREC, and mixed rare earth oxalate.
The project has also received offtake interest from three countries namely Japan, USA and Europe.
In December 2024, Victory penned a rare earths offtake with Sumitomo Metal (TSE:5713), targeting to provide Sumitomo with 30 percent annual mixed rare earth carbonate production from the North Stanmore heavy rare earth elements (HREE) project.
Moving forward, the company said that completion of additional kinetic optimisation testwork will follow, along with engineering updates to incorporate the revised leach parameters.
“The rapid leach kinetics position North Stanmore as a genuine global outlier, especially compared to peer projects requiring 24–36 hours of leaching,” said Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director Brendan Clark in a December announcement.
“This advantage is expected to translate directly into great project economics as the PFS progresses.”
New data will be added to the pre-feasibility study, which is scheduled for release in 2026.
