Charlotte Mathews
16 January 2008
Johannesburg — FLUORSPAR producer Sallies was re-engineering its plant at Buffalo mine to be able to process both fluorspar and rare earth minerals, Sallies chairman and CEO Tom Dale said yesterday.
Rare earth minerals consist of 17 elements and range from the relatively common cerium to the fairly rare thulium and lutetium.
The rarest of these minerals fetch very high prices. They are used in a variety of applications from catalytic converters in cars to glass, ceramics and electronics.
Sallies said 18 months ago it was considering the viability of exploiting its rare earth deposits and there was some speculation at the time that they could be worth more than its fluorspar.
Dale said that speculation was "foolish". Most of Sallies' rare earths were monazite, fetching substantial prices, but not the most valuable of rare earths.
Sallies was evaluating the size of its rare earth resource and it might be possible to give an estimate on the deposit when it announced its interim results for the period last month, he said.
Sallies had not yet completed a pre-feasibility study into the viability of mining the rare earths but instead of stockpiling rare earths mined as a byproduct of fluorspar, its engineers and metallurgists were looking at how to extract rare earths at the same time as the fluorspar by re-engineering the plant. The cost of that would not be substantial, he said.
Sallies had a headline loss of 8,5c a share in the year to June due to operational problems. It said in October its profit forecast of 5c-6,5c a share for this financial year would not be achieved.
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