Vital Metals commenced rare earths mining at Nechalacho in Canada’s Northwest Territories (NWT) in 2021, making Vital the first rare earths miner in Canada and only the second in North America.
We commenced mining ore from the North T starter pit in June 2021, which we are crushing and sorting on site. We are crushing and sorting ore before sending it to our Saskatoon rare earths extraction plant to produce a rare earth carbonate product.
Nechalacho hosts a world-class resource of 94.7Mt at 1.46% REO (measured, indicated and inferred). Nechalacho’s North T Zone hosts a high-grade resource of 101,000 tonnes at 9.01% LREO (2.2% NdPr), making it one of the highest grade rare earths deposits in the world.
Under an amended offtake agreement with Norway-based REEtec, following REEtec’s decision to use our product as its principal feedstock for its rare earth separation facility, we will incrementally deliver 187.5t NdPr (contained within approximately 500t TREO) to REEtec by October 2023 and a minimum of 750t/year NdPr over five years (total 3,750t NdPr) contained within approximately 2,000t/year TREO.
Our process will naturally remove a significant percentage of cerium with the final product to contain a maximum of 25% cerium.
We have commenced work to define a mine plan for Stage 2 which will involve development of the larger Tardiff deposit at Nechalacho. This drilling aims to develop Nechalacho as a larger scale, longer life rare earths project.
More than $120 million has been spent by previous owners on drilling, permitting and project development at Nechalacho, which includes a 40-person camp and airstrip.
Vital aims to be the largest independent supplier of clean mixed rare earth feedstock outside China.
