Transforming the Rare Earth Landscape: Brazilian Critical Minerals'(ASX:BCM) Path to Innovation with Andrew Reid
May 02, 2024Season 1Episode 3
Andrew Musgrave
Unlock the secrets of revolutionary mineral extraction with Andrew Reid, Managing Director of Brazilian Critical Minerals (BCM), as he takes us on a journey through the company's groundbreaking rare earth discoveries in Brazil. In a landscape dominated by Chinese production, BCM's EMA project emerges as a titan, boasting a resource exceeding a billion tonnes. This episode offers a rare glimpse into the transformative developments reshaping a company with over 15 years of history, once known as BBX Minerals, and how these discoveries are poised to shake the foundations of the global mineral market.
Amidst intricate technical discussions, Andrew reveals how innovative exploration techniques lead to exceptional recoveries and efficient leaching processes, setting BCM apart as a leader in the industry. We delve into the complexities of rare earth element processing and how BCM's approach could redefine the economics of rare earth extraction, offering a beacon of hope for low-cost operations in an era plagued by capex blowouts. Join us for this insightful conversation where the future of mining technology is sculpted from the very earth we stand on.
Unlock the secrets of revolutionary mineral extraction with Andrew Reid, Managing Director of Brazilian Critical Minerals (BCM), as he takes us on a journey through the company's groundbreaking rare earth discoveries in Brazil. In a landscape dominated by Chinese production, BCM's EMA project emerges as a titan, boasting a resource exceeding a billion tonnes. This episode offers a rare glimpse into the transformative developments reshaping a company with over 15 years of history, once known as BBX Minerals, and how these discoveries are poised to shake the foundations of the global mineral market.
Amidst intricate technical discussions, Andrew reveals how innovative exploration techniques lead to exceptional recoveries and efficient leaching processes, setting BCM apart as a leader in the industry. We delve into the complexities of rare earth element processing and how BCM's approach could redefine the economics of rare earth extraction, offering a beacon of hope for low-cost operations in an era plagued by capex blowouts. Join us for this insightful conversation where the future of mining technology is sculpted from the very earth we stand on.
Andrew Musgrave:
Welcome to another episode of ASX Briefs. I'm your host, andrew Musgrave, and today we are delving into the world of mineral exploration and advanced processing technologies with Andrew Reid, the Managing Director of Brazilian Critical Minerals. In today's episode, we'll explore the company's exploration strategies, the implications of their recent discoveries and what the future holds for their operations and the broader mineral market. Andrew, welcome to the show.
Andrew Reid:
Thank you very much, Andrew. Pleasure to be here.
Andrew Musgrave:
Excellent. So I think what we'll start off with if we can just give us a bit of an overview of Brazilian critical minerals. I know there's been a lot of change there in the last sort of three to six months, so if you can just talk to the audience through that, yeah, so Brazilian Critical Minerals, or BCM, is a rebrand of a company that's been on the ASX for some time, approximately 15 years.
Andrew Reid:
It was a company called BBX Minerals. It has its roots fairly and squarely in Brazil for the whole of its history, but over the course of the last 12 months particularly during 2023, it made two very substantial discoveries of rare earths up in the northern part of Brazil.
Andrew Musgrave:
All right, and if you can just take us through that discovery of the EMA project, if you can just elaborate a bit more on the significance of the discovery and what that means for the company.
Andrew Reid:
Oh look, the EMA project and the recent announcement just some 10 days ago of a monster resource exceeding a billion tonnes is certainly a game changer for us and for the company. This is now a mine in waiting that needs to be developed. The, the emma project is one of the largest rare earth projects, uh, to be to be defined, um, certainly outside of china. It is what we call a fully ionic clay deposit. It has a number of key attributes that will lend itself very nicely to low-cost operations, low capex and sort of low costs going forward, particularly in an environment now, andrew, where capex blowouts and high capex for mining projects have tended to become the norm over the last few years. Tended to become the norm over the last few years.
Andrew Musgrave:
Okay, Now the team uses advanced exploration techniques.
Andrew Reid:
Can you talk us through how they work and how beneficial they are for the company? Look, with rare earths and exploration in Brazil it's a fairly sort of standard process of drilling, not unlike what you get typically in Australia. But the understanding of rare earths is quite difficult and quite technical. It's a very complex group of commodities and it's really around the assaying and the understanding of the composition of the different elements which really can make or break your project. And of course you know how and how much you can recover of these critical elements in your basket really determines the economics of any project.
Andrew Reid:
Now the Emma project, as of today, has quite exceptional recoveries for rare earths. We're able to leach it in very low times, not exceeding about 30 minutes. The pH that we leach the solution at is at pH 4, so it's a very nice pH level, at pH 4, so it's a very nice pH level, which means that we can use a very low-strength acid to remove the rare earths off the clay minerals. So all of these key attributes we're able to take and it really is the holy grail of ionic rare earths to have good recoveries low leach times, low dosage rates of the key reagents, not having to hit your solution. So it's ambient temperature and pH 4. I mean, that's as good as you get and that's so far what the EMMA project has delivered.
Andrew Musgrave:
And I think are they I'm assuming they're some of the challenges around processing rare earths. Is that probably going to be the biggest challenge in the short term?
Andrew Reid:
I think look, absolutely there are a lot of. Particularly if you're a hard rock rare earth deposit, then there are a number of key challenges around processing. Okay, it's not necessarily the case with ionic clays. I mean, they are generally in the clays close to the surface, so they're very amenable to low-cost mining. They normally come at very low operating cost structures. They come with, and they should come with, low capex, right. But there are a number of opportunities for this particular project which differentiates us from other ionic clays in Brazil and outside of Brazil, and we will then enter into a scoping study over the coming weeks to really fully evaluate the best path forward for this particular project.
Andrew Musgrave:
And is there a likelihood of that, the tenement or the resources that you're looking at there to be expanded into new areas?
Andrew Reid:
Look, we are extremely confident that the first billion tonnes is that it's just the first billion tonnes. There's a lot of opportunity to expand the resource base. We've only drilled a small percentage of the overall tenement area that we've got in that part of the world. So you know we're very confident, but we've got a billion tonnes. We've got a mine already in the making. The next steps for us are to infill the drilling, to get it from an inferred category into indicated, to continue with the important metallurgical work that validates the existing work that we're doing. That we've done in Brazil Late last year and early this year. We've done some results with ANSTO, which are coming back, but with some quite phenomenal results, and we'll bring all that work together inside the scoping study over the next couple of months to really hopefully show that this really is a project that will turn into a mine and deserves to be developed.
Andrew Musgrave:
Yeah well, there's no doubt of the need for these rare earth elements in so many products these days. So, from a shareholder perspective or a prospective shareholder perspective, how does the next sort of three to six months look? Or a prospective shareholder perspective?
Andrew Reid:
how does the next sort of three to six months look? I think the flow of positive news will continue over the next months. Like I said, we'll enter into a fairly big draw program very shortly. It's the draw season now in Brazil. We've got a lot more work coming out of ANSO the first results are due out shortly and the scoping study. I think the type of deposit that we've got, the geology that underlies the deposit, it makes it something very different and something very special, and we sort of plan on capitalising on those key differentiators and seeing really what we can do. So there's a lot of options going forward and we need to just fully evaluate them. But as a shareholder with a very small market cap right now, I'd be out there buying stock Andrew.
Andrew Musgrave:
Well, no doubt about it, there's plenty going on, which is fantastic, particularly in these sort of minerals as well. So what we'll do? We'll keep a very close eye on what happens over the coming months and we look forward to future updates and maybe catching up a little bit down the track. Yeah, great, thank you very much. Excellent, okay, andrew, thanks very much for your time. Thank you. That concludes this episode of ASX Briefs. Don't forget to subscribe and we look forward to catching you on our next episode.