By Acrux Resources Executive Director’s Sean Browne and Geoff Linnell

The metal-intensive transition to a low-carbon economy has cast a spotlight on the mining sector’s ability to supply the large amounts of raw materials required for the energy transition. Past years of under investment in new supply for many metals, combined with rising demand has led to a mineral shortfall, most specifically the critical minerals needed for the energy transition including copper, cobalt, lithium, vanadium, nickel, graphite, chrome and manganese, among others. It is imperative that we find alternative ways to meet this demand, and fast!

According to the International Energy Agency, to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, sectors contributing to the energy transition will be responsible for over 45% of total copper demand, 61% of nickel demand, 69% of cobalt demand, and a staggering 92% of lithium demand by 2040.

Aware of the gap being created between the future demand of critical minerals and the speed at which the mining industry can supply these minerals, Acrux Resources avers that new mineral recovery technology innovation can supplement mineral exploration in unlocking additional sources of mineral resources.

As an alternative to the 10-15 years that it takes to find, prove, develop and ramp-up most mines, which is incompatible with the speed at which demand for metals is increasing, we at Acrux Resources believe that a significant mineral resource opportunity exists in the form of discard dumps and tailings dams. These mega-deposits are rich in minerals and metals and can easily be economically exploited with the right technology, to produce these in-demand minerals immediately.

In mining, both discards and tailings materials are created as the final “by-product” of the mining process. Discards comprise stockpiled material that falls below a mining operation’s cut-off grade (the grade of mineralisation at which a mineral deposit can be economically mined), while tailings is the waste material left over after the mineral beneficiation process; and contains unrecoverable targeted metals and minerals.

What if the development of new and improved technologies could provide the perfect opportunity for resource owners to bring discarded ore bodies and tailings dams to account, even in a supressed commodity price environment?

In South Africa, which is the world's largest producer of platinum group metals (PGMs), significant value can be unlocked from the country’s vast amounts of PGMs tailings, that litter the Bushveld Complex in the Limpopo and North West provinces. Due to the way that these PGM-rich tailings have been processed (material grinded to an ultra-fine size of below 100 micron) to liberate the PGM from the ore), it has meant that the residual material is too fine to recover any of the remaining chrome-rich co-product from the tailings material – effectively sterilising this chrome material.

The inability to recover this chrome-rich co-product has meant that several large-scale tailings dams containing hundreds of millions of tons of ultra-fine chrome, grading as high as 34% contained chrome, have been left sterilised.

We therefore believe that the implementation of a mineral processing solution to recover this valuable material from the tailings would have the same effect as having landed upon, through exploration, the largest chrome discovery of this century.

At Acrux Resources, we have undertaken the necessary research, development and innovation to develop and support new technologies capable of unlocking value from discard dumps and tailing dams, enabling us to address the current supply side squeeze for the metals needed in the energy transition.

Turning liabilities into value

Mineral recovery technology company, FineTech Minerals, in which Acrux Resources is a shareholder, specialises in the recovery of fine and ultra-fine oxide mineral particles (<110 micron). Through its unique and scalable mineral recovery process, which can be easily integrated into existing mineral processing operations, large quantities of valuable metallic oxide ore mineral content, in the form of fine and ultra-fine particles, can be recovered from historic or current arising tailings waste across multiple commodities and geographies.

Using this mineral recovery process, FineTech Minerals has been able to effectively ‘discover’ a sizeable chrome mineral reserve from Upper Group (UG), Middle Group (MG) and Lower Group (LG) chromite reef discards and tailings in South Africa, where it is successfully recovering significant chromite material of 100 micron and finer from tailings material that has already been processed.

The use of innovative technology has turned this once uneconomical, unviable PGM and chrome-rich waste material into a mega mineral reserve.

In a similar vein, Acrux Resources’ sensor-based sorting technology subsidiary, Acrux Sorting Technology, is able to use separation technology to economically recover manganese from low grade discard dumps. The company has undertaken a comprehensive test work study to separate manganese from gangue material through its multi-sensor technology. The net effect for miners would be an increase both in bottom line performance as well as an increase in mineral reserves as lower grade material becomes economical to mine and process.

Whether it be chrome, tin, nickel, cobalt or copper, there are untapped mineral resources all over the world. Innovative processing technologies can turn these environmental liabilities into significant mineral reserves, thereby providing a meaningful addition to exploration – in turn creating value from something that was once valueless.

Besides bringing these resources to book, the technology inadvertently reduces a resource owner’s environmental liabilities and risks and in turn improves their environmental, social and governance scorecards.

We understand the importance of finding additional sources of supply to address the shortage of critical metals caused by the energy transition. While we can manage mineral supply risks in the medium to long term through recycling and establishing new mines, a potential solution to quickly bridge this supply gap is by re-evaluating our mineral processing methods.