Mount Ridley Mines (ASX:MRD) plans to advance two separate Selectro patents to international filing after lodging a second provisional patent application for industrial metals with IP Australia on 15 October 2026 through its subsidiary, Mount Ridley Tech.
The filing, prepared by patent attorneys Wrays, uses the same core chemistry as the original Selectro application lodged on 18 August 2026, with the reagent molecule tuned to the mineralogy and metal suite of industrial feedstocks.
The original application covers the recovery of scandium, rare earth elements, and gallium from regolith-hosted feed at the Grass Patch Project.
Holding the applications separately allows the company to progress each on its own timeline and licence or partner each without encumbering Grass Patch intellectual property.
Bauxite represents the first feedstock tested outside the Grass Patch Complex under the Selectro third-party program. First-pass test work by ALS on a composite from Australian Silica Quartz Group’s (ASX:ASQ) Darling Range Bauxite Project recovered 92% of the aluminium and 97% of the iron, with more than 90% of the silica remaining in a small, pH-neutral residue.
Mount Ridley notes that optimisation for bauxite has not yet begun.
According to the US Geological Survey, most of the world’s gallium is recovered as a by-product of alumina refining. Mount Ridley aims to use Selectro to recover aluminium, iron, gallium, and titanium from bauxite.
Managing Director Allister Caird says the company has taken “the necessary steps” to protect this second application of the underlying Selectro chemistry, a measure he deems ‘prudent’ given the strength of the results in its first test on bauxite.
“Those results have only increased our confidence in the broader applicability of Selectro, which remains the subject of ongoing third-party testing beyond our own Grass Patch feed,” Caird says.
Next steps include analysing gallium levels in the bauxite leach solution using a more sensitive assay method, optimising the chemistry for bauxite, testing additional third-party feedstocks, and progressing both applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty.
Mount Ridley Mines is a critical minerals explorer focused on the discovery and development of heavy rare earths, gallium, and scandium across its projects in Western Australia.
Write to Paula Fabe at Mining.com.au
Main image: Mount Ridley Mines
