Modern Mining August 2023

Team preparing soil samples. Metals” - all of which are present at Monta Morumbi.

“These elements are critical to the world’s green energy revolution. The current production capacity is nowhere near the levels of the short-term and long-term forecast. So, the fundamentals for REE are extremely strong for now and in the future.” Altona seeks complementary REE opportunities “Given that we are based in Africa, have extensive experience in rare earths extraction and an expansive network, we are extremely well posi tioned to advance new rare earths projects on the continent. As it is, we are always assessing potential opportunities that come our way and it is very likely that in the near future Altona will be involved in another rare earths project, in another jurisdiction in Africa.” Rare earth elements occur in a variety of geological environments including carbonatites, hydrothermal, ionic clay and heavy mineral sands deposits. Africa’s complex geology makes it a favourable environment for REE deposits of all four types and with large parts of the continent relatively under explored for REE, the potential for new discoveries is high, espe cially for ionic clay deposits which are a relatively new economic geology model. Further to this, Simonet believes that there exist opportunities to share processing and refining facilities for REE between different projects in the same country and possibly between different projects in neighbouring countries. “Mozambique’s neighbours Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, all have rare earths projects with some at advanced stages of develop ment. I believe that there may be opportunities in the future to share processing facilities with developed projects,” he concludes. 

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