Transcription of The Stock Network Interview with Axel REE (ASX:AXL), Managing Director Dr Patience Mpofu
Lel Smits: Axel REE has significantly expanded its Caladão Rare Earth project in Brazil, more than doubling the mineral resource at its Woolridge deposit, including a Maiden indicated resource. The growth adds further scale to a project already demonstrating strong potential across rare earths and critical minerals, with recent metallurgical test work also achieving up to 95% gallium and 74% scandium extraction at Tiger Creek. I’m joined today by Managing Director Dr Patience Mapofu to discuss the major resource upgrade, what the Maiden indicated resource means for Woolridge, the expanding gallium opportunity and Axel’s strategy to develop a large-scale critical minerals platform in Brazil.
Patience, welcome to the Stock Network.
Patience Mpofu: Thank you, Lel, thank you for inviting me.
Lel Smits: Pleasure to have you on and I’m keen to learn more about the major resource milestone you’ve more than doubled the Woolridge resource and established a Maiden indicated resource.
Patience, what does this upgrade tell you about the scale and also the potential of Woolridge?
Patience Mpofu: Oh, absolutely. I think this is a very important step for our development work. As you know, Woolridge is the area that we have selected to do our field test, which is our next step.
So the first thing is, if you look at the resource, which as you rightly said, it has doubled, more than doubled, that’s 107% to 260 million tons. Now the first thing that we want to do is to ensure that we do risk the project. As we have already mentioned, 128 initially was all inferred and now we have an additional 110 million tons, which is indicated.
That’s a very important step because when you do risk your project, you are able to now do your economics. We want to ensure that we get to above 75% because currently we’re at 42% indicated. Once we get to above 75, we’re able to do our scoping studies and that’s why this is very important.
Lel Smits: Thank you. Excellent. And in terms of the global Caledon rare earths resource, you’ve now grown at 24% while the global gallium resources increased 31%.
How important is this growing scale as you move the project towards development?
Patience Mpofu: Oh, absolutely. We have not even touched the tip of the iceberg. As you know, this is just part of our entire global resource.
We are getting closer to a billion tons of our trio. We want to ensure that we have enough to do our BFS. This is a very important step because as you know, as you scale and you become bigger, it means you’ll have a longer life for your mine and it means more economics for your business.
So this is a very important. And as you say, it’s not just the rare earth, it’s also our gallium, which has improved significantly. So the scale allows you to do much more, increases your life, but also improve your economics.
Lel Smits: Excellent. And patience in terms of building that broader critical minerals platform with rare earths, gallium, also scandium all emerging across Caledon. How do you see the opportunity evolving? And also what do you think will be those key technical and development milestones ahead?
Patience Mpofu: Oh, fantastic. As we have already said, gallium is our upside. It’s an optionality, but it also gives investors that alternative source of income. Gallium, as you know, it’s used as a semiconductor in various emerging technologies.
And scandium too, it’s a very important, even though it’s used in small quantities as a material performance metal, very, very important. So it gives that additional value for our company and the supply demand dynamics and the pricing is looking fantastic. So we’re very excited about gallium.
We’re excited about scandium. And as you saw the results that we announced on our gallium from about 25% recovery to almost 95%. That’s a huge development.
And we are doing more work right now in terms of reagent optimisation, in terms of how we can actually make it economically viable. So that’s a very important step. And we are very excited because this actually gives Excel that competitive advantage against all other competitors.
Lel Smits: Thank you. Patience. Thank you for the update from Axel REE and look forward to hearing more when you’re on stage at iMARC.
Patience Mpofu: Thank you so much, Lel, for this interview.
Ends