Rare-earths developer Arafura Resources on Monday announced that it had successfully produced commercial quality separated rare-earth oxides (REOs) from its Nolans project, in the Northern Territory.

The REOs separation was one of the key technology work streams in progress for the Nolans project feasibility study.

“The production of separated REOs presents Arafura with the opportunity to extract maximum value from the Nolans project,” said company MD and CEO Steve Ward.

“This is a very substantial milestone in our company’s path to becoming the pre-eminent supplier of REOs to the world from operations wholly within Australia.”

Ward said that separated middle rare-earth oxides (MREEs) and heavy rare-earth oxides (HREE) have now been produced at laboratories in Sydney. Following this initial laboratory work, a fully integrated mini-plant, representing the MREEs and HREEs production circuit was successfully operated for 62 hours, resulting in the commercial quality MREEs and HREEs products.

Laboratory-scale separation of individual light rare-earth oxide fractions was now in progress.

Ward reported that a pilot plant to produce commercial quality samples of all separated REO products for customer assessment was planned, following the successful completion of the light rare-earth oxide test work.

Meanwhile, design and engineering studies on the Nolans mine and beneficiation plant is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

The Nolans project would start production in 2013, and hosts an estimated 850 000 t of REOs, 3,9-million tons of phosphate pentoxide, and a further 13,3-million pounds of uranium.