Canada’s Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Jonathan Wilkinson announced on Wednesday over C$16 million ($11.6m) in new funding to support the Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC) in Saskatoon. The funding builds on earlier support of nearly C$13.5 million ($9.8m) from Prairies Economic Development Canada (PrairiesCan) and Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) for SRC to establish its rare earth processing facility and develop new rare earth mineral processing technologies.
Wednesday’s announcement includes C$15.96 million through PrairiesCan to enable SRC to acquire bastnaesite (a type of ore containing rare earth elements) from Canadian sources and create new domestic capacity for bastnaesite processing, which will be integrated into SRC’s rare earth processing facility.
SRC will process bastnaesite ore acquired from Vital Metals’ Nechalacho operations in the Northwest Territories to produce a mixed rare earth product, which will be further processed using SRC’s solvent extraction and metal smelting technology to produce rare earth metals.
For the rest of this article: https://www.mining.com/canada-invests-over-11-million-in-critical-minerals-research-in-saskatchewan/