Rare Earths Americas (NYSE American: REA) announced Tuesday encouraging metallurgical test results at its Alpha ionic adsorption clay rare earth project in Bahia, Brazil.
SGS Geosol laboratory testing achieved approximately 40% rare earth leach recovery (excluding cerium), compared with the 27% recovery assumption in Alpha’s Technical Report Summary — a 48% relative improvement under different test conditions, the company said.
Alpha hosts an inferred mineral resource of 202 million tonnes at 1,520 ppm total rare earth oxides (TREO) at a 1,000 ppm TREO cut-off, with magnet rare earths neodymium and praseodymium (NdPr) and dysprosium and terbium (DyTb) making up approximately 21% and 3% of the TREO basket, respectively. Inferred resources are not mineral reserves and have no demonstrated economic viability.
REA added that key metallurgical input is now available for Alpha’s Initial Assessment, over 80% complete, which remains targeted for release in the first quarter of 2027.
In the tested composite, neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium represented approximately 37% of rare earth content excluding cerium; heavy rare earths represented approximately 29%.
Rare Earths Americas is advancing a portfolio of high-grade heavy rare earth projects in the US and Brazil, including three core assets it says could position the company as a key non-Chinese supplier.
“Alpha combines substantial resource scale with an encouraging mix of the magnet and heavy rare earth elements needed to diversify global supply chains,” Rare Earths Americas CEO Donald Swartz said in a news release.
“These SGS results provide an important technical input to the next stage of evaluating Alpha’s development potential: we recovered more rare earths during laboratory leaching than assumed in our prior technical report, although further work is required to establish overall recoveries and economics,” Swartz said.
At market close in New York, REA stock was down 5%. The company has a $150.7 million market capitalization.
