ABX GROUP LTD (ABX) - Heavy Rare Earth Breakthrough

Heavy rare earths sit at the centre of magnets, electrification, and the modern supply chain, but getting to a product customers will actually buy is the hard part. We’re joined again by Dr Mark Cooksey, Managing Director and CEO of ABx Group Limited, to hear what’s changed since our last chat and why ABx believes its Tasmanian Deep Leads project is moving into a more serious development phase.

We break down ABx’s second high purity mixed rare earth carbonate (MREC) sample and why it stands out: a higher proportion of heavy rare earths and even lower aluminium and iron impurities. Mark explains what MREC is used for, how separation plants think about feed quality, and why customer validation ultimately decides what “good” looks like. We also dig into processing choices for ionic clay rare earths, including what column leaching can tell you about heap leaching potential versus stirred tank leaching, and how that flexibility can shape capital cost, operating strategy, and approvals.

The conversation widens to the bigger Australian critical minerals ecosystem, including ABx’s involvement in the $240m Critical Metals for Critical Industries CRC and the push to accelerate practical R&D that supports real project decisions. We cover the Ucore Rare Metals MOU as a reminder that rare earths are a specification driven market, then switch gears to ABx’s ALCORE technology and the continuous pilot plant being built at Bell Bay to make industrial fluorine chemicals from aluminium smelter byproducts. We close with bauxite updates across Queensland, New South Wales, and Tasmania, and ABx’s priorities through 2026: engineering design, environmental approvals, customer deals, exploration upside, and getting the pilot plant running.

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Transcript

Andrew Musgrave

Welcome back to ASX Briefs, the podcast that brings Australia's most innovative listed companies into focus. And today we're joined again 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 speak with you again and welcome back to the ASX Briefs podcast.

Mark Cooksey

Great, Andrew. Nice to be with you again.

Andrew Musgrave

Okay, Mark, we only spoke a few months ago, but for listeners that may be new to the ABx Group story, can you provide a brief overview of the company?

Mark Cooksey

Yeah, so ABx, we started life as an Australian bauxite back in 2009, and we were a bauxite explorer for a fair period of time. But now our two key projects are both related to critical minerals. One is a rare earth project in Tasmania, and the other is a chemical technology we're developing to take an aluminium smelter byproduct and produce fluorine chemicals from it. So, there that's very much the focus of the company now. We still have our bauxite work that we look to exploit, but it's rare earths and fluorine that we invest in.

Andrew Musgrave

Okay, and you recently announced the production of a second high purity mixed rare earth carbonate sample from Deep Leads. So, what makes this specific product even more significant than the maiden sample, especially regarding its heavy rare earth content?

Mark Cooksey

Yeah, well, you sort of touched it on right there. So, our maiden MREC, and so mixed rare earth carbonate, that's what we'll produce from our project in Tasmania, and we'll sell that to a separation plant either in Australia or overseas, where they'll produce separated rare earth oxides. And what companies are really looking for in an MREC is a high heavy rare earth content, because heavy rare earths are worth more and harder to get, and low impurities. And that's what our maiden MREC had. And our second MREC had an even higher proportion of the heavy rare earths, so even better. And then an even lower amount of the two critical impurities, aluminium and iron. So, at face value, it's like, well, first one was good, this one's even better. We'll check that, as we always do, by providing these results and samples to customers, because it's actually the customer that really decides, you know, what's the most important to them.

Andrew Musgrave

And the second sample was produced via column leaching rather than tank leaching. So how does this flexibility and processing methods optimize your path towards commercial production?

Mark Cooksey

Yeah, so a key thing with these ionic clay resources is that the chemistry is trivial, literally. You know, you put the ore in in you can do it in salt water, but you do it in typically in ammonium sulphate, and you'll leach out a higher percentage of the rare earths in, you know, less than 15 minutes. But the decision you've got to make on the project is well, what's the physical way that you do that leaching? Is it, for example, you could do it in tanks, in stirred tanks, or you could do it in a in a heap where you have a pile of ore and pour the ammonium sulphate on top. Or like in China, they actually do in situ where they pump the ammonium sulphate into the ground. And we're currently evaluating the pros and cons and the costs of those different options. And I guess one of the obvious things to do was to check, well, that really good leaching performance we got in the tanks, you know, in the small tanks, in our ANSTO test work, would you get that in a heap as well? And so, we did column test work, which is a sort of a way of testing what a heap would look like. And the performance was in fact as good if not better, and the MREC was as good if not better. So, what that says is we can do either from the point of view of the leaching. It's going to be all the other factors that dictate which is the best approach for the project.

Andrew Musgrave

Now, the company was recently announced as a partner in two major Australian government critical minerals R&D programs. So, can you discuss your role in the $240 million Critical Metals for Critical Industries CRC and the development of the world first in-field geometallurgical sensor?

Mark Cooksey

So, yeah, so on the CRC, well, so cooperative research programs, they've been around about 30 years. You know, the government typically announces two or three each year, and they're a consortium of typically companies and research agencies, such as universities and CSIRO, for example, with federal government money on a dedicated program of work for five or seven years. And this one that's just been awarded, in fact, it was the only one awarded this year, is for critical metals for critical industries. We became aware of it sort of nine months ago and thought this is a good opportunity to leverage you know our investment with then further our you know investment by R&D agencies and the federal government to basically get more done per one of our dollars. We'll now be now that the bid is successful, we'll be finalizing the research program. So, ABx will be instrumental in guiding the research for rare earths within that CRC. And we'll be looking to, yeah, to use those funds to accelerate what we were trying to do anyway. You know, it's not some R&D stuff on the side, it's we need to develop and scale up our project. How can these funds and this R&D expertise help us do that?

Andrew Musgrave

You've also established an MOU with Ucore Rare Metals. So, how does this partnership, along with your work at ANSTO, position ABx within the global western supply chain for rare earths?

Mark Cooksey

I've said it often, it's really important to understand the customer and have develop good relationships with customers. And sometimes in minerals we forget that because things like gold and you know, bauxite and copper, if you make, you know, produce the standard grade, you can sell it. But in the case of rare earths, it's a very particular market. So, you're not just selling a generic product, you're selling you know an MREC that a customer wants. And so, the MOU with Ucore illustrates that we've talked enough with each other to say, yes, you know, ABx thinks that UCOR will be a good customer for its MREC, and Ucore thinks that ABx will be a good supplier of MREC to it and we're trying to do that with multiple customers. It really guides the project. Again, it's all about you know, what does the quality of the MREC have to be, what does its cost have to be, what does its volume have to be, and you it's only by knowing those things that you can really design and then build the most appropriate project.

Andrew Musgrave

And the company is continuing to develop technology via ALCORE to produce industrial chemicals from aluminium smelter byproducts. So, can you provide an update on the continuous pilot plant currently under construction in Bell Bay, Tasmania?

Mark Cooksey

Yep. So, it's a pretty serious bit of engineering. It's three million of CapEx, some reasonably complex engineering equipment that we're getting built from specialist overseas manufacturers. So, we're right in the middle of the environmental approval process, finalizing the engineering designs, or not even more than that, the actual physical designs of the equipment and getting that manufactured. Much of the of the ancillary equipment's already been manufactured and we're about to get it delivered to sites. Getting the site ready, a little bit of civil works. We were very fortunate that the building is an existing one owned by Rio Tinto that they've leased to us on you know pretty good terms. But yeah, it's about turning that idea into a physical pilot plant, you know, in in mid-year. It's really, really exciting time to go from, you know, we've done lots of laboratory work, but to see it taking shape at a bigger scale is really exciting.

Andrew Musgrave

Looking now at your bauxite projects, you've received an initial $2.7 million payment for projects in Queensland and New South Wales. So, what are the next steps for those assets and the DL130 project in Tasmania?

Mark Cooksey

Yeah, so in Queensland, yes, our partner, Good Importing International, has invested $2.7 million into the project. That those funds are being used to receive through the environmental approval process and the project design, which means particularly things at the port, you know, what facilities are we going to have at the port to receive our bauxite from Binjour and load it onto ships? Once that environmental approval is obtained and we've finalised the project design, then GII, the partner, will put in the second $2.7 million. For New South Wales, it's a sort of a similar concept of project, but it's an earlier stage. So GII has an option to invest in that project. They've paid a $300,000 option fee to retain that exclusive option, and that's being used for effectively a scoping study right now. So that's something that'll hopefully be completed in the next several months. And in Tasmania, the bauxite, this is really interesting because it's small, but it's co-located with the rare earths. And so, we have a very advanced approval process for bauxite mining. We hope to get that approved in the next several months. That will allow us to mine cement grade bauxite and fertilizer grade bauxite, sell it to customers, and we're looking to then how can that create some synergies with a with a rare earth project that could come afterwards? You know, we we've got a good reputation in Tasmania, but we want to show look, we're a good operator, and that hopefully can assist the process for getting approval for a rare earth project.

Andrew Musgrave

Now, Mark, in summary, with project development stage now officially commenced for Deep Leads, what are the key priorities for ABx Group through the remainder of 2026?

Mark Cooksey

The 2026 for rare earths, it's about advancing the key one is advancing the engineering design of the project. So, to know what we want to build and then doing the test work to confirm that that's the right approach, commence the environmental approval process and can increase, continue to increase our engagement with customers, you know, turning those you know, those non-binding MOUs into more binding agreements. There will be some exploration still. We do still want to grow the resource. And in fact, some recent results showed that we've found some new ionic zones within our resource, which is very exciting because it's ionic that basically means low cost. So, there's definitely more exploration. On ALCORE, it's all about the pilot plant. Get that, you know, by the end of the year that that will be running, and you know, hopefully performing well. And again, we'll be using that to engage with customers and on bauxite advancing the projects in Queensland, New South Wales, and we'd expect to be mining bauxite in Tasmania before the end of the year.

Andrew Musgrave

All right, Mark. Well, it's been great to chat again, so thanks for your time, and we look forward to further updates from ABx Group in the upcoming months.

Mark Cooksey

Great. Thanks for your time, 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.