Corella Resources (ASX:CR9) discusses novel flowsheeting for high-purity alumina

Corella Resources Limited (ASX:CR9) CEO Jess Maddren provides an overview of the business, discussing novel steps for high-purity alumina flowsheeting.

Peter Milios: I'm Peter Milios from the Finance News Network, and today I'm talking with Corella Resources (ASX:CR9). Corella Resources, trading under the ASX Code "CR9" with a market capitalisation of approximately $3m, is an exploration company pursuing critical and industrial minerals such as kaolin, high-purity alumina, quartz and rare earths in Western Australia. Joining me today is Corella Resources' CEO, Jess Maddren. Jess, welcome to the network.

Jess Maddren: Thanks, Peter.

Peter Milios: Jess, as it is your first time on the network, could you just give us a brief overview of your business?

Jess Maddren: Yeah. No problem. Corella Resources is based about 3.5 hours, its tenements are 3.5 hours north-east of Perth in an area that's around the Beacon township, and also known as Tampu, the northern part of the wheatbelt area. Our core business project at the moment is around kaolin and kaolin-to-HPA. So, kaolin is the feedstock that we'll be looking to put into our HPA processes, but the area is so unexplored that I'm in the process of looking at our exploration plan over the next few months, and hopefully we've got some news coming out around that as well. Because it's so unexplored… and it's like all of WA, so unexplored, there's so much potential. Why go overseas? Why not look in our backyard at our ground that we already have? So, it's an exciting company, small as you mentioned, growth and opportunity ahead of us in the back end of this year into 2025.

Peter Milios: Jess, so you just mentioned your HPA, but, in relation to this week, you made a significant announcement regarding the government funding for HPA flowsheet R&D. How significant is this news?

Jess Maddren: This is fantastic. As mentioned, we are a small company. There's not a lot of us in the company, so outsourcing some of that technical expertise is really important. So, the funding is used for this R&D project. So, it's all through UQ and the chemical engineering division at UQ, and some clever cookies, as chemical engineers and professors in that division. So, this particular project, which is actually with some ex-colleagues of mine from my BHP Technology Centre days, is they've thought of some novel and innovative ways that we can reduce that CapEx and reduce that OpEx, and in turn reduce the energy and the environmental impact of the flowsheet. So, this first project is really focused on going from proof of concept, which we already have, through to a little bit of a scale up and see what we can do with different materials.

And so what it's looking at is usually with kaolin or any type of clay, you need to activate it first, and by activating it, I mean you have to heat it and calcine it. What that does is drive the water off cracks it, so you crack that and what you do is you open that up and make that available for leaching, usually, in the process that you do for any kind of feedstock like that. So, we're looking at how do you take that step out. That calcination is a big energy, so that's heating it right up to over 1,200 degrees Celsius or above to drive that water off the kaolin. That's one of the novel, innovative key steps in this flowsheeting R&D that we're doing. So, then there's another part of the development where we are looking at removing or using different reagents and removing the heating in the next step of the process. So, any time you remove heating or high temperature anything, you're removing the energy intensity. So, that means you can go for other methods of energy supply, and actually your overall energy costs and impact on the environment is lowered every time. So, simplifying flowsheet by taking out high temperature in any of our steps is really important in this flowsheeting.

Peter Milios: Just looking at more broadly the company, what key news flow can we expect to see from the projects in the next six to 12 months?

Jess Maddren: Yeah, so this R&D project will take us about six months. So, that just all got signed off this week and announced straightaway. So, that'll take us six months. The sample's there, ready to go. So, hopefully we will have some results we can announce over the next six months specifically around that HPA flowsheeting and R&D, around the alternative novel flowsheet. But we also have our exploration, which is super exciting. This is a whole area. I nicknamed it the "Bermuda Triangle" because there's no data out there. Not only that, it's all under cover. Under cover is a geologist's worst nightmare. It's hard. If you've got no outcrop, weathering, so your soil profiles get washed away, you've got to use a multitude of techniques to try and get some drill targets out there. But there is strong evidence of alkaline intrusives and weathering for rare earth clays. So, paleo channels, pegmatites. I personally have walked through most paddocks and outcrops out there, so I've seen evidence of the pegmatites, the rare earth clays. We've got a really good hypothesis to go drill around where they're going to be. So, you'll see that come over the next six to 12 months as we prove up these areas, but we've got to get out there and drill.

Peter Milios: Jess, thank you so much for your time.

Jess Maddren: Wonderful. Thanks Peter.