Meeka Metals Limited announced results from upstream beneficiation tests, part of the ongoing metallurgical test program to develop a pathway to commercial production. Key results from the beneficiation test work were: Between 90.4% and 62.5% of the rare earth elements were contained in the fine fraction (-20µm size fraction). The fine fraction (-20µm) only contained between 34.5% and 60.4% of the total sample mass.

By rejecting the coarse fraction (+20µm), between 65.5% and 39.6% of the sample mass can be removed while between 90.4% and 62.5% of the rare earth elements can be retained. Rejecting the coarse fraction (+20µm) delivered 1.81 times, 1.15 times and 1.91 times TREO grade uplift compared to the raw sample grade for each of the three test samples respectively. These positive results confirm that cheap, simple and broadly adopted large scale mineral processing techniques can be applied to remove waste from the process stream prior to leaching.

On a commercial scale this would involve particle size separation through scrubbing to produce a slurry prior to screening and hydro-cyclone classification to discard the non-target elements in the coarse fraction, while retaining the valuable -20µm size fraction, which hosts most of the rare earth elements.