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ASX BRIEFS
ABX GROUP LTD (ABX) - Heavy Rare Earths, Clean Fluorine, Near-Term Bauxite
Critical minerals move fast when geology, chemistry and execution align. We sit down with Dr Mark Cooksey, Managing Director and CEO of ABx Group, to unpack how the company plans to bring heavy rare earths and clean fluorine chemicals to market while capturing value from proven bauxite assets.
First, we break down why ABx’s Tasmanian ionic clay resource matters: cleaner leaching, fewer process steps and a mixed rare earth carbonate with higher proportions of dysprosium and terbium, the workhorses behind high‑temperature permanent magnets. Mark explains how collaboration with ANSTO strengthens metallurgy from bench to larger test scales, and how a new exploration licence in northern Tasmania bridges existing leases, supports resource growth and deepens understanding of the geological controls behind the ionic clay system.
We then shift to fluorine. With fluorspar supply tightening and fluorine recognised as a critical input for semiconductors, fluoropolymers and refrigerants, ABx is developing a process to convert a surplus aluminium smelter byproduct into hydrogen fluoride. The pilot plant at Bell Bay, Tasmania, leased within a Rio Tinto facility, is designed for fast learning: build over the next six months, then run to generate performance data and samples for customers. Alongside, ABx advances bauxite projects through agreements with GII in Queensland and New South Wales, progressing environmental approvals and option studies, while a smaller Tasmanian bauxite operation targets early 2026.
Across the conversation, Mark lays out clear FY26 priorities: finalise metallurgy and engineering for a right‑sized rare earths start‑up, advance commercial talks for premium MREC, complete and operate the fluorine pilot, and drive bauxite approvals toward near‑term cash flow. If you care about heavy rare earths, fluorine supply chains, and practical, local execution in Australia, this is a timely look at where the market is heading and how ABx plans to lead.
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Andrew Musgrave
Welcome again to ASX Briefs, the podcast that brings Australia's most innovative listed companies into focus. And today we're joined by Dr. Mark Cooksey, the Managing Director and CEO of ABx Group Limited, an Australian company delivering materials for a cleaner future, focused on heavy rare earths, clean fluorine chemical production, and near-term bauxite production. Mark, great to have you with me today and welcome to the ASX Briefs Podcast.
Mark Cooksey
Great, great to be here with you, Andrew. Looking forward to it.
Andrew Musgrave
Now, Mark, for listeners that may be unfamiliar with ABX Group, can you just provide a brief overview of the company?
Mark Cooksey
Yeah, so Abx started life as Australian Bauxite, it was listed in 2009, and initially was a typical bauxite explorer. We've still got bauxite assets and they're looking to exploit those. But our real focus now is on two new projects. One of them is rare earth exploration. We've got an ironic clay rare earth resource in Tasmania, and the other is a process technology to reprocess a byproduct from aluminium smelting into industrial fluorine chemicals. So, it's the rare earths and the fluorine chemicals that are the main focus of the business now.
Andrew Musgrave
Okay, and you recently announced the made and mixed rare earth carbonate sample from Deep at Leads. So, what makes this sample so significant, particularly when compared to your peers?
Mark Cooksey
Yeah, there's really two things about it. So, the first is that it was produced from an ionic clay. And whilst that may be a bit, you know, sort of semantics, it's actually important for cost. So, we could produce that using the standard three-step process that you need to produce an MREC from an ionic clay. So that's leaching, impurity removal, and precipitation. Some of our peers, if it's not ionic, you end up with too many impurities and you have to do sort of subset or more process steps to get an equivalent MREC. And even then, often your impurities are high. So that's number one. And number two is that by virtue of our resource having a higher proportion of heavy rare earths, in particular dysprosium and terbium, which are the two of most interest, that flows through to the MREC itself. And so, our MREC has a higher percentage of dysprosium and terbium, for example, than peers, which makes it a more valuable product and more in demand.
Andrew Musgrave
Okay, now can you also comment on your partnership with the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization known as ANSTO on this project?
Mark Cooksey
Yeah, so ANSTO, I mean, they're yeah, semi-government agency specializes in in nuclear and radioactive materials, and because of because rare earth ores often and historically um have radio, you know, uranium and thorium in it, ANSTO is the party that's developed the most expertise in Australia with dealing with rare earth. So, ourselves and lots of our peers use ANSTO to do test work. So very quickly after we first discovered our rare earth resource back three or four years ago, we engaged ANSO to do test work. So that's whether that's simple low-scale tests or larger, you know, dealing with kilograms of material or even tens of kilograms of material. We also do our own testing, which really complements the testing done with ANSTO.
Andrew Musgrave
Okay. And the company has also been granted an exploration license for an initial five-year term with the company's highly prospective rare earth exploration region in northern Tasmania. So, can you talk us through the significance of this announcement?
Mark Cooksey
Yeah, so as I said, we started life as a bauxite explorer, and so we had several bauxite exploration leases in Tasmania, which we'd kept bits and relinquished bits over the years, and that's it was those that we used to make our initial rare earth discoveries three or four years ago. Since then, with the really good results we've had on rare earths, we've acquired some newer exploration leases, including the one you just mentioned. So, in actual fact, our current resource of 89 million tons spans a couple of leases that actually have a gap in the middle. And this new lease we've just acquired fills most of that gap. So, it's partly to extend the resource and also importantly to help us really deeply understand what's the geological phenomena that have led to the formation of our ironic clay resource.
Andrew Musgrave
Now, the company is also developing technology to produce industrial chemicals like aluminium fluoride from aluminium smelter byproduct. So, can you provide an overview of this and the pilot plant that is currently under construction in Bell Bay, Tasmania?
Mark Cooksey
Yeah, so this project um sort of spawned out of our bauxite work, you know, because bauxites used in the aluminium value chain. And what we identified is that fluorine chemicals are actually a major global industry. I mean, not even as an engineer, you know, you don't I wasn't that familiar with them, but they're used in all sorts of places like um polymers, semiconductor manufacturing, refrigerants. But fluorspar, which is the ore, is actually getting increasingly hard to get. So, every major jurisdiction has listed fluorine effectively as a critical mineral. What we've identified is that there's a byproduct from aluminium smelting that historically has been kept within the industry to help grow new smelters, build new smelters that's now becoming in surplus, and it's 50% fluorine. And so, what we've developed is a chemical process to take that byproduct, which contains a lot of fluorine, and turn it back into hydrogen fluoride, which is the precursor chemical to all the fluorine chemicals that we use in the world.
Andrew Musgrave
Okay, now looking at other projects, can you just provide a bit of an update on the status of the two bauxite projects in New South Wales and Queensland?
Mark Cooksey
Yeah, so as I said sort of in the intro, we'd found these bauxite deposits and established these resources a few years ago. We're not exploring for bauxite now, but we're clearly looking to capture value from the ones we've got. And just a few months ago, we announced a series of agreements with an Australian private company called Good Importing International or GII. And that includes them investing up to $5.4 million to get a 75% stake in the Queensland project. They've already made the first investment of $2.7 million, and so we're together, ABx and GII are working on the environmental approval for that project. That's designed to mine bauxite from near Binjour, sort of southwest of Bundaberg, and then truck it to Bundaberg and export through there. And in New South Wales, it's a less advanced project, but again, GII has an option to make a similar investment, sort of $4.8 million to take a 75% share in that project. And together this, and they've just paid a fee to extend that option period. So together this year or for the next six months, we're doing a joint study of the project to help GII decide whether to exercise their option.
Andrew Musgrave
Okay, Mark. Now, just to wrap things up, what are the key priorities for the company in FY26 that investors should keep an eye out for?
Mark Cooksey
Yeah, there's plenty happening. I'm struggling myself to sort of keep up, get all our announcements out with all the work we're doing. So, on rare earths, the focus is what does a starting project look like? The interesting thing about the rare earth market is it's not, you know, it's really critically important, but it's not massive. So, the most important thing is to get into production quickly. And that's what our project offers because it's such a good MREC product with good metallurgy in a good location, with good infrastructure, being in northern Tasmania. So, it's the engineering studies and the metallurgy to support that. That is the main focus coming six to twelve months. Commercial negotiations with potential customers and still some exploration because we still want to grow the resource as well. On the fluorine project, you touched, you mentioned it, the pilot plant. So, we've done the laboratory work. We're now building a pilot plant in Bell Bay, Tasmania, in a facility leased from Rio Tinto, who've got an aluminium smelter next door. And so, yeah, the next six twelve six months is about building it, and the following six months is about running it. And on bauxite, it's yeah, advancing the environmental approvals for Queensland. And also, hopefully we've got a small bauxite mine lease application in Tasmania that we expect to get into production this year early in 2026 as well. So, plenty, plenty happening.
Andrew Musgrave
Excellent. Okay, Mark. Well, it's been great to chat today, so thanks for your time. We wish you all the best, and we look forward to further updates from ABx Group in the upcoming months.
Mark Cooksey
Great. Thank you, Andrew.
Andrew Musgrave
That concludes this episode of ASX Briefs. Don't forget to subscribe, and we look forward to catching you on our next episode.