NioCorp Developments (NB.TO) announced that its demonstration-scale processing plant in Quebec, Canada is now processing ore samples from the company’s Elk Creek critical minerals project. This project has been confirmed as the second largest indicated-or-better rare earth resource in the US.

The plant project will demonstrate that NioCorp can extract and separate rare earth elements from ore that the company expects to mine from the project site.

The Elk Creek Project is well advanced with a resource and now it is all about raising capital to finance the project. Financing which now has a considerable benefits given multiple tax incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act.

Going forward, the demonstration plant will process Elk Creek ore samples in three phases:

• Phase 1 is designed to demonstrate a new approach to the initial processing of the ore that NioCorp expects to mine from the Project site, subject to receipt of necessary project funding, including calcination, initial leaching, and rare earth extraction.
• Phase 2 is designed to demonstrate an improved process for the second stage of leaching along with Niobium and Titanium separation.
• Phase 3 is designed to demonstrate the technical viability of separating high-purity versions of several target magnetic rare earth products from Elk Creek ore samples, as well as confirming previously achieved high recovery rates for high-purity Scandium trioxide. The potential magnetic rare earth products include Neodymium-Praseodymium (“NdPr”) oxide, Dysprosium oxide, and Terbium oxide. NioCorp will utilize conventional solvent extraction (“SX”) technology to test a rare earth separation approach developed by NioCorp and L3. NioCorp and L3 have years of collective experience in SX technology.

Testing is expected to be completed over the next few weeks with testing results to be disclosed after each operational phase concludes.

“Our team is very pleased to see the demonstration plant begin operations, and we intend to closely monitor every step of this process,” said Scott Honan.  “Many of these processes have already been successfully tested at the bench scale.  Given our team’s years of experience in hydrometallurgy, including rare earth separations, I expect that we will demonstrate positive results.  I also look forward to potentially demonstrating how our simplified process flow sheet can more efficiently and cost-effectively produce Niobium, Scandium, and Titanium.”

Equity Guru has recently featured NioCorp Developments. For more information on the fundamentals, check out these articles here and here. Everything from economics to geopolitics is covered.

Be sure to tune into our various interviews with NioCorp CEO Mark Smith:

The stock is currently up over 1% with over 162,000 shares traded.

In terms of the technicals, our analysis still stands. The uptrend and reversal pattern remains intact. Buyers have stepped in on the retest of $0.93 and a higher low is expected. This would mean we take out recent highs printed at $1.10.

In the next few days, I would be watching to see if NioCorp can confirm a close back above the major psychological $1.00 zone. This is a stock where both the technicals and fundamentals are aligning. Keep it high up on your watchlist.