Reward Minerals has announced that exploration licence application E09/2763 was granted by the Department of Energy, Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety.
The +200 km2 tenement forms the Carnarvon Potash Project (CPP), is 100% owned by Holocene Pty Ltd and is situated in an ideal infrastructure location ~30 km (~70 km by road) north of the coastal town of Carnarvon in Western Australia.
The CPP has potential to contain concentrated seawater type brines at shallow depth which will be the initial focus of exploration activity going forward.
Further, the CPP directly adjoins Mining Lease ML245SA which covers the Lake Macleod salt and gypsum operations (Lake Macleod). Lake Macleod operation involves solar evaporation of concentrated seawater brines extracted from shallow trenches in the lakebed generating a regular supply of feed brine of salinity ~10 times seawater.
Following evaporation and recovery of salt the residual brine (Bitterns) containing 9 –12 g/litre Potassium are discarded. Reward has conducted numerous laboratory trials demonstrating that the Potassium can be recovered from these Bitterns at potentially low cost.
Reward plans to conduct pilot testwork and feasibility studies to recover Potassium Sulfate (K2SO4, SOP or Potash) and other industrial products from Bitterns at the CPP.
In September 2023, Reward released very positive technical and financial outcomes from an engineering scoping study (ESS) based on Bitterns supplied from solar salt operations. In summary, the ESS findings indicated that using bitterns (supplied at zero cost) from Lake Macleod and Reward’s processing technology, SOP could be produced via an ESG friendly and globally competitive manner.
Lake Macleod has operated continuously for over 50 years predominantly under ownership of Dampier Salt Limited (Dampier Salt) which is majority owned by Rio Tinto. Reward notes Dampier Salt announced it had entered a sales agreement for Lake Macleod, with privately-owned salt company, Leichhardt Industrials Group for US$375 million. The operation has potential to produce in excess of 3.5 milltion tpy of salt and >80 000 tpy of SOP.
Reward CEO Lorry Hughes commented: “The grant of the CPP exploration licence is set to be the start of an exciting new chapter for Reward as we continue to advance the development of our novel SOP processing technology and seek to commercialise it as soon as possible. Located so close to a major regional town, established supplies of solar salt bitterns, gypsum, mains power and water, should allow us to inexpensively progress through the pilot stage of development in order to secure full scale development partners. In addition, there is also potential to sub-lease an existing camp and evaporation ponds located within the CPP that are owned by Beta Nutrition Pty Ltd which holds a 4 000 hectare Crown Lease for Algae cultivation. The Crown Lease partly overlaps the southern part of Lake Macleod and the CPP. Since the completion of the ESS in September last year, Reward has been convinced that the development of SOP operations using reject brines from solar salt operations in ideal infrastructure locations such as Carnarvon can result in the production of the lowest cost and most ESG friendly SOP globally. The pending change of ownership of Lake Macleod to a private equity owned company may provide a new dimension for potential developments. Reward had previously been engaged with Dampier Salt throughout initial phases of the development of the Reward processing technology prior to the sale agreement to Leichhardt”.