OD6 upgrades fluorspar grades at US project
Our US critical minerals Investment OD6 Metals (ASX: OD6) just showed its fluorspar can be cleanly separated from waste rock using ore sorting technology.
OD6's project in Nevada has already shown high grade fluorspar from surface.
Fluorspar is a critical mineral used in hydrofluoric acid, AI chips, batteries and defence tech and the US produces near none of it, which has become a big issue.
Today OD6 announced results from samples taken and sent to sorting tech company TOMRA in Germany.
TOMRA has sensor tech that’s currently being used to remove waste at the world's largest fluorspar mine in Mexico. (source)
It does this by using laser and X-ray sorters to clearly separate high grade fluorspar, mixed material and barren waste at three of Quinn's four deposits.
(source)
So by being able to reject that waste at a coarse crush (as seen today), OD6 could then potentially make a saleable metspar product (60-96% fluorspar, sold into steelmaking) with minimal processing.
This is a low CAPEX (capital expenditure) route to near-term cash flow before a full acidspar flotation circuit, possibly opening up low dilution funding options to get running and then expand.
OD6 assayed 98.3% fluorspar from its samples, already above the >97% fluorspar acidspar threshold and this was before any processing.
The testing also used XRT (X-Ray Transmission) on the same samples which gave similar results in terms of being able to distinguish the samples:
(source)
The difference between the 2 is the laser judges off the surface, XRT measures the atomic mass of the particles, so it is good to see both work which gives OD6 potential options.
Next up for this testing is larger 500-1,000kg bulk sorting, which will put a firmer number on the waste rejection and grade uplift (due to being a larger sample more replicating a real working condition).
What's next for OD6?
🔄 Target generation for US fluorspar project
We want to see OD6 sample in and around the old workings on its project, run some geophysics and generate high priority drill targets ahead of its maiden drilling program.
Milestones:
- ✅ Rock chips
- ✅ Channel sampling
- ✅ Historic drill results
- 🔄 Digitisation of scanned paper maps and cross-sections into a 3D geological model
- ✅ Soil/channel sampling
- 🔲 Geophysics
- 🔲 Drill targets generated
Strategic / Government Engagement for fluorspar in the US
- 🔲 Engage with US Department of War, Department of Energy, or DLA regarding domestic fluorspar supply
- 🔲 Explore strategic partnerships or offtake discussions
