Critica (ASX:CRI) has completed the first tranche of a previously reported $8 million placement to accelerate operational activities at the Jupiter Rare Earths Project in Western Australia.
The funds will be used to conduct a Scoping Study at Jupiter, as well as associated drilling campaigns, metallurgy and piloting, and offtake engagements.
Bell Potter Securities and Taylor Collison are acting as joint lead managers for this placement.
As part of tranche one, around 203.06 million shares were issued at $0.026 per share. The first tranche raised around $5.3 million.
In addition to the placement, a one-for-one attaching option with a two-year expiry exercisable at $0.043 was issued.
The second tranche of the placement is subject to the company obtaining shareholder approval, which is expected to be held around 15 January 2026.
Lion Selection Group (ASX:LSX) has committed to invest $500,000 under this placement, in support of the Jupiter Project, located 50km west of Mt Magnet in Western Australia.
Following the last rare earths market interest phase and before the current one, Lion Selection Group decided to invest in Critica. As recently reported by Mining.com.au, the investment firm took a contrarian view that it was a good time to be looking at rare earth plays while few others would.
It was against a long term outlook that was very robust for increasing demand due to all the new world applications for rare earths like magnets, defence, and robotics.
Speaking to this news service, Lion Managing Director Robin Widdup says the firm wasn’t hell bent on a rare earths investment, but was looking for one that could be at the front of the queue when rare earths interest returned, “so our criteria were for a project that was well located (safe country with minimal nationalisation risk, and proximal to transport or ideally offtake interest), large, and high grade in the ground”.
“Critica is all of those things – we invested in something that has the optionality to be a very large, strategic scale asset in the REE space which itself has a high strategic interest level,” Widdup explains.
Critica is rapidly advancing the Jupiter Project with a mine-to-magnet plan to meet surging artificial intelligence, electric vehicle, renewables, and defence demand.
Jupiter has a global inferred resource of 1.8 billion tonnes at 1,700 parts per million (ppm), including 520 million tonnes at 2,200 ppm total rare earth oxides.
The Centre for Science and Technology of Mineral and Environment in Hanoi intends to design, construct, and operate a pilot-scale plant for mixed rare earth carbonate (MREC) from Critica’s Jupiter Rare Earths Project in Western Australia, as reported.
The plant will process a 3,000kg run-of-mine bulk sample sourced from Jupiter using a magnetic separation and floatation flowsheet, producing rare earth concentrate ahead of Critica’s plans for downstream testwork and a Scoping Study.
Write to Aaliyah Rogan at Mining.com.au
Images: Critica
