Mount Ridley Mines (ASX:MRD) has secured $104,000 in co-funding to advance downstream scandium development through additive manufacturing research.
The company has secured funding under the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Kick-Start program to evaluate scandium applications in high-value sectors including aerospace, defence, and advanced manufacturing. CSIRO contributes up to $50,000, with Mount Ridley funding the balance.
The project will be conducted by CSIRO researchers from the Lab22 additive manufacturing research facility and is expected to commence shortly.
CSIRO will undertake four key activities including reviewing the patent landscape for scandium-containing alloys, identifying global suppliers of scandium metal and powders, assessing promising application areas, and evaluating emerging extraction and processing technologies.
The findings will inform a proposed second stage focused on developing scandium-based materials for additive manufacturing.
Mount Ridley holds a JORC 2012-compliant Inferred Mineral Resource of 367.98 million tonnes at 57.2 parts per million scandium (Sc) containing approximately 18,555 tonnes of Sc metal at the Grass Patch Complex in Western Australia. This positions the project as one of the largest scandium resources worldwide by contained metal.
The current resource reflects only a subset of historical drill samples assayed for scandium to date. The company is re-assaying historical samples not previously tested for scandium.
The scandium mineralisation at Grass Patch is co-located within the same regolith profile as the company’s heavy rare earth and gallium resources, offering potential combined extraction and processing efficiencies.
CEO Allister Caird says the program represents the first step in what the company anticipates being a significant downstream program.
“We have a strong belief that scandium will play a major role in rapidly scaling industries such as aerospace, robotics, and defence for which no suitable substitute exists in high performance alloy applications and we intend to stay ahead of it,” Caird says.
“CSIRO’s Lab22 is an ideal partner for this work given their unique expertise in both critical minerals and metallic additive manufacturing. Our scandium resource is one of the largest in the world and we intend to do more with it than put it in a resource estimate.”
The Grass Patch Project is located approximately 25km north of the deep water port of Esperance and hosts defined heavy rare earth element, scandium, and gallium resources identified through 70,000m of historical drilling.
Write to France Pinzon at Mining.com.au
Images: Mount Ridley Mines
