MOUNT RIDLEY MINES LTD (MRD) - Rare Earth Breakthrough At Grass Patch Artwork

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MOUNT RIDLEY MINES LTD (MRD) - Rare Earth Breakthrough At Grass Patch

August 24, 2026 • Andrew Musgrave

0:00 | 14:38

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Supply chains are tightening, export rules are shifting, and suddenly the “hard” parts of critical minerals projects matter more than the hype. We’re joined by Allister Caird, Managing Director and CEO of Mount Ridley Mines Limited, to unpack what’s happening at the Grass Patch project near Esperance in Western Australia and why Mount Ridley is betting hard on metallurgy to unlock a full critical mineral basket.

We talk through Mount Ridley’s strategy at Grass Patch, including the exploration upside across a tenement package that is still largely untouched, plus the push to secure downstream and metallurgical pathways early. Alastair explains why many rare earth elements projects succeed or fail in the processing plant, not the drill core, and how the company is trying to de-risk that with a proprietary in-house leach method called the Selectro™ Process.

Then we get into the numbers that turned heads: strong recoveries across heavy rare earth elements, light rare earth elements, scandium, and especially gallium, where a hydrochloric acid baseline returned zero but Selectro™ delivered meaningful recovery. We also dig into what a closed loop, recyclable reagent design could mean for project economics and environmental footprint, and why simpler flowsheets can be a competitive edge in hydrometallurgy.

Zooming out, we look at geopolitics and western supply chains for heavy rare earths, scandium alloys, and gallium, and how Mount Ridley is positioning through partnerships including CSIRO and US national laboratories. If you care about Australian critical minerals, rare earth processing, and what catalysts actually move a project towards development, this one’s for you. Subscribe, share the episode, leave a review, and tell us: which critical mineral do you think becomes the biggest bottleneck next?

Andrew Musgrave

Welcome again to ASX Briefs. And today I'm joined by Allister Caird, the Managing Director and CEO of Mount Ridley Mines Limited. Mount Ridley is a critical minerals explorer focused on heavy rare earth elements, scandium, and gallium, at its flagship Grass Patch project located near Esperance in Western Australia. Allister, great to have you with me today and welcome to the ASX Briefs podcast.

Allister Caird

Thanks for having me, Andrew.

Andrew Musgrave

Now, Allister, to start things off, could you give our listeners a quick overview of Mount Ridley Mines and the core strategy driving the company forward at Grass Patch?

Allister Caird

Absolutely. So, our company is a critical minerals company. Our flagship asset is the Grass Patch Project, which is 25 kilometres north of the deepwater port of Esperance. We have three co-located MREs for heavy rare earth elements, Scandium and Gallium. We're a company that had been around for quite some time now. Initially, we were chasing nickel and copper that never eventualized to a commercial outcome. Subsequent to that, we focused our effort on a prospect further out to the east, which is called our Block 3 Mia prospect. We have a large NDPR rare earth resource out that way. But as of recent time, we have really been focused on our Grass Patch complex part of the project, which has the three aforementioned MREs there.

As for our corporate strategy, we put out a new corporate strategy at the end of last year, subsequent to me joining as CEO at the time. We are focused on three key pillars. The first is targeted exploration and expansion. We've only explored about 20% of our tenement area to date. So, there is substantial scope for broadening and expanding those resource footprints. The second is downstream and metallurgical pathways. We have a really big focus on incorporating a downstream aspect to our business. That's to bring in technologies and partners related to progressing our metallurgical objectives for the company. And as I'm sure you know; a lot of these critical mineral companies can live and die by their metallurgy. So, I am certainly very focused on bringing in innovative techniques. I don't think you can expect a different answer if you ask the same question. And that's sort of the rationale for bringing in these more novel approaches to metallurgy. And I'm sure we'll talk about one of those approaches shortly. And then the third and final pillar for the company is really strategic positioning and partnerships. So that relates to off-take partners, it relates to which jurisdictions we're focusing on supplying into. Obviously, being close to a deep-water port in Esperance gives us a fantastic export route and it gives us an opportunity to really decide where we're shipping our product to or where we're looking for partnerships there. And basically, any other partner that's aligned with accelerating the path through development and into production as quickly as possible. So that's sort of a brief 10,000-foot overview of the company.

Andrew Musgrave

You recently announced major breakthrough results using your proprietary in-house leach technology, the Selectro™ Process. What are the key takeaways from these initial metallurgical test results and how do they compare to standard processing methods?

Allister Caird

Sure. So that obviously relates to our downstream strategy of the business. The Selectro™ Process, that is a very recent announcement. It came out just last week. As you alluded to, it is an in-house IP that was developed by our Chief Technology Officer, Mr Chris Larder. He has developed and refined this leaching process, this innovative leaching process over the course of more than a decade. And he's refined that IP over that time as well. So, he joined us as a consultant in April. We began the test work immediately to essentially trial this IP and just see how effective it was on the Mount Ridley feedstock and project. And we were blown away by the initial results. We did a hydrochloric acid baseline test first and foremost on an eight-sample composite from some diamond drill core that we have at our project area there. And the first Selectro™ test was substantially better than the hydrochloric acid baseline test on the same sample. We made one very minor change to the second test parameter, and we essentially doubled the performance of hydrochloric acid from that second Selectro™ test. So, in terms of the numbers, where we got up to 83% recovery of our heavy rare earth elements. It’s approximately 80% on average across the full spectrum of heavy rare earths. We had up to 77% recovery of our light rare earth elements, and on average, that's around 73% across the full light rare earth spectrum. Scandium, which is very hot topic at the moment, we had 80% recovery, which is fantastic. And then last but not least, we had gallium at 56% recovery. And critically, we received 0% recovery using the hydrochloric acid. So, it's really a testament to just how effective this leaching process is and what this can mean for the project moving forward. Because a single leach solution like hydrochloric acid, which is the traditional industry standard for this type of deposit, just simply wouldn't have recovered any gallium, which means you have to start thinking about a more complex and complicated flow sheet. And obviously, the more complex and complicated it becomes, the more expensive it becomes as well. So, we now have a technique, a process that's proprietary, 100% owned by Mount Ridley, and we're using to unlock the full spectrum of our critical mineral basket at the Grass Patch project.

Andrew Musgrave

And how does the Selectro™ Process impact project economics and environmental sustainability compared to traditional hydrometallurgical approaches?

Allister Caird

Yeah, I mean that's the million-dollar question. Well, could be quite a lot more than a million-dollar question. Essentially, we have obviously conducted our own back of the envelope calculations. Those we're extremely excited by those numbers, but obviously it's not appropriate for me to share those with you at this time. But we have begun initial discussions with engineering groups, and we're looking to initiate an early scoping study to allow us to bring those financial numbers to the market. So, I can't really speak to it just now, but that's something that we're working on delivering into the market in the very near term. On the environmental profile, it's really related to the closed loop design of this process. And what I mean by that is that you're not I guess you're not wasting the reagent. So, let's just say you're using hydrochloric acid, you will get some loss of that fluid, whether that's into the reactor or whether that's into the atmosphere, and you're constantly having to generate more and more hydrochloric acid and top that reagent level up. We are certainly looking to design a closed loop process, and that what that means is that it is very recyclable, and you get many more cycles of effective reagent use before needing to add any reagent to the system. So that's the critical piece of the puzzle here because that not only affects the environmental footprint, but also has a huge impact on the economics of this. And I guess just finally on the economics of the Selectro™ Process, the reagent that we utilize in the Selectro™ Process is cheaper per unit than hydrochloric acid. So, before you even start to consider what the economics look like and whether you have a closed loop system, you're already in front, just simply utilizing the reagents we're using over the hydrochloric acid. So, that's critical and I guess the final part is that we're not leaving any critical mineral behind here. As I mentioned before, if we were to use hydrochloric acid, we'd be leaving behind gallium and also europium, too. So, we're bringing everything with us, and it gives us the best chance of you know making this project into a production story.

Andrew Musgrave

Looking at it now from a macro level, global supply chains for heavy rare earths, scandium and gallium are facing significant geopolitical pressure and export restrictions. How does Mount Ridley position itself within these western supply chains, particularly with your recent CSIRO initiative?

Allister Caird

Sure, yeah. I mean it's I guess the supply chain of critical minerals has been brought into the public eye, obviously since well, for a long time, but I think really you know since mid to late last year. We are I guess fortunate enough to have a select group of critical minerals that are really restricted from a supply perspective. So, you have heavy earth elements, you know, we're looking at roughly 90% coming out of China there. You have gallium, which is 98% out of China. So that's not just the in-ground, but that's also the processing capability, as with all of these critical mineral baskets. So, gallium has been restricted for global export from China in late 2024. That restriction was suspended at the start of 26. But that suspension doesn't extend to defence applications. So, the US Department of War still has no access to gallium and its critical in defence applications. So, there's just no supply of that into those Allied Western supply chains. And then when finally, we have scandium, which is out of China and Russia and obviously it has been the forefront of a lot of conversation recently and Bloom Energy have recently reported that they're going to be in a deficit for scandium as early as 2027. So, there's just not enough scandium in the world to facilitate their business model, and that's just looking at solid oxide fuel cells. That's not looking at the other application, which is scandium alloys. And then finally, I suppose to our technology partners, CSIRO is one of those partners. We're looking at a manufacturing, or we're currently performing a manufacturing study for scandium alloy development. That is part of a broader manufacturing and downstream initiative that we have with CSIRO, and that's bringing on obviously a technology leader, a company that I actually used to work for a long time ago and then we also have partners in the US. We have a material transfer agreement with Lawrence Livermore, which is one of the national laboratories in the US, and also with Oak Ridge National Lab. We also have an MTA in place with them. And then finally, we are under NDA with a group out of Germany called Fraunhofer. There are also some samples are in train to the Fraunhofer facility in Bremen. So, we've got a lot of these partners in allied jurisdictions, and we have, I guess, common objectives across these different jurisdictions.

Andrew Musgrave

Finally, Alastair, what can shareholders and investors look forward to over the next six to twelve months as you progress the Grass Patch project?

Allister Caird

Yeah, a lot of initiatives and a lot of catalysts coming up. We are really focused on developing the Selectro™ Process as quickly as possible. So, I guess considering that objective, we are initiating a test work program, a bulk test work program. So, we'll be looking at shipping anywhere between 75 and 300 kilos of Mount Ridley ore for bulk test work. So that'll allow us to scale up. Hopefully the results from that program will facilitate the design and construction of a demonstration facility. I'm looking to initiate that in sort of the next six to twelve months. But certainly, the results from the test work, the bulk test work program will be much earlier than that. We hope to produce a mixed rare earth oxide from this test work program. We'll also test flotation as a beneficiation technique there. We've recently done a TEMA study which indicated that all of our rare earths are associated with phosphate, meaning that they could be potentially beneficiated via flotation, and we have some had some of our peers have fantastic results through that pathway. So, the Selectro™ Process to date has only just been tested on un-beneficiated or non-beneficiated ore. So, there could be a fantastic upside there in terms of the recovery of the Selectro™ Process on beneficiated ore. We will look to further progress relationships with those aforementioned technology partners in the US, Europe, and Australia. We will get the results of that first phase of the CSIRO kickstart program. As I mentioned, we'll be looking to also engage and receive the results from that early scoping study. So that's probably just high level what we're expecting in the next six months, and then you know, hopefully after that six months, we'll be able to yeah start looking at the design and construction of that demonstration facility. And I think that it's a very exciting time for Mount Ridley and our shareholders. We've been around for a long time now, and I think now we're really starting to get a run on. So, it's an exciting time to keep an eye on the company.

Andrew Musgrave

Okay, Allister. Well, it's been great to have you on the podcast today. So, thanks for your time, and we look forward to further updates over the course of this year and into FY27.

Allister Caird

Lovely. Thanks, Andrew. I appreciate you having me on.

Andrew Musgrave

That concludes this episode of ASX Briefs. Don't forget to subscribe, and we look forward to catching you on our next episode.