Rare Element Resources
Bear Lodge Project
Canadian NI 43-101 Technical Report
October 9
th
, 2014
10135-200-46 – Rev. 0
1-21
1.15 Further Project Opportunities
The Company has identified additional areas to optimize the Project to capture both
technological and economic upside. The PFS identifies these, and the Company
plans to incorporate them into the FS. Some of these opportunities include:
Enhanced Thorium Removal/Lower Costs from Proprietary Processing Technology
–
Subsequent bench-scale testing has demonstrated the ability to eliminate detectable
thorium within the final product by adjusting certain variables within the Company’s
proprietary process. The Company continues to evaluate this work and is looking at
conducting larger-scale testing in the coming months. Additional opportunities to
reduce costs include the adjustment of process variables and the investigation of
selective removal of the lesser-valued rare earths early in the Hydromet process.
Rare Earth Separation as a Means to Participate More Fully in the Value Chain
–
Initial studies indicate that the very high purity of the Company’s concentrate should
lend itself to lower cost separation by eliminating the need for the circuits required to
remove impurities. The Company is investigating available alternatives to determine
the costs/benefits of incorporating downstream separation into its business model.
Inferred Resource Within Pit Outline –
The 31.8 million tons (28.9 million tonnes) of
Inferred mineral resource with an average grade of 2.58% TREO (using a 1.5%
cutoff) was not considered in the economic evaluation in the PFS. Of this inferred
resource, one-third, or approximately 11 million tons falls within the boundaries of the
designed pit and could be recovered during mining. This material is currently defined
as waste in the Project model. Recovery of any portion of this inferred mineral
resource could reduce the stripping ratio; extend the high-grade mining period, and
increase production, mine life, and revenues.
Additional Exploration Targets
– Geological, geochemical, and geophysical work,
along with limited drilling, have identified a number of additional targets within the
Project boundaries. Two of the most promising are the Taylor and Carbon areas,
owing to their demonstrated enrichment in heavy rare earth elements (HREE; see
Rare Element Technical Reports - Noble et al, 2013; Larochelle et al, 2012; and the
Rare Element News release dated August 4, 2011). Higher HREE content can have
a positive impact on revenues, because HREEs’ generally command a higher price
per kilogram. Further exploration on these targets is not currently planned until
mining operations are established.
Capturing By-Product Mineral Value
- Mineralization at the Bear Lodge Project
contains potentially valuable by-products, such as manganese, iron, magnesium, and
