Taruga Minerals Limited announced the initial metallurgical test results from acid leach trials conducted by leading rare earth research and testwork facility ANSTO Minerals. The results have confirmed the presence of easily leachable REEs within the deposit and shown that extractions of up to 70% of the magnet REE oxides (MREO) and 60% of the heavy REE oxides is achievable with moderate sulphuric acid addition. Further optimisation work will now be undertaken under the guidance of ANSTO, and Gavin Beer.

This work will focus on optimising the flowsheet in alignment with commercially viable reagent and processing costs, and will include variations in leaching conditions such as reagent concentration and leach times, and beneficiation. Beneficiation work will include processes such as sizing, ore-sorting and desliming. All priority drill samples from the 2022 RAB drilling program have been returned and reported.

Additional samples were submitted in order to complete the geological database and confirm the technical teams sample selection methodology was sufficient in identifying mineralisation. The technical team now have a high level of confidence that the existing sampling methodology is capturing all significant mineralisation. This allows accurate identification of mineralisation during drilling to support efficiency and cost saving.

Taruga Minerals has discovered clay-hosted rare earths (REEs) at Morgans Creek within the Mt Craig project in South Australia. Features of the prospect are low levels of cerium, uranium and thorium, and a high proportion of the heavy and magnet rare earths. "Weak" acid leach test work conducted in early 2022 indicated that the REE mineralisation has a very high proportion of readily soluble REEs, and as such may be amenable to a low-cost simplistic metallurgical flow sheet.

Over the last few years, there have been numerous reported of elevated concentrations of REEs associated with clays (clay-hosted REE deposits), but in many cases the deposits have not proven to be classic ionic clay deposits, and a lower pH has been found to be necessary to dissolve the REEs. Under these circumstances, the economics of the process depends on REE extraction, acid consumption and the concentrations of dissolved gangue elements. An initial indication of potential economic viability of any such deposit can be obtained by leaching over a range of acidities to determine RE extraction versus gangue dissolution.

The individual REE extractions were calculated using the measured head and the final leach liquor and residue solids compositions. Gangue dissolution was recorded and will be reported once the calculations become available from ANSTO. Acid Leach Response: Acid leach tests were carried out at a lower pH to determine if the REE extraction can be increased under mild to moderate acidity.

These test conditions are summarised below: Acid leach condition 1: pH 1 leach, 2h duration; 220 C. Acid leach condition 2: 50 g/L leach, 6 h duration, 50 C.