Australian Strategic Materials Ltd (ASX:ASM) has produced 6 kilograms of a key neodymium iron boron (NdFeB) alloy at the Korean Institute of Rare Metals (KIRAM) facility in Korea for use in permanent magnets.
NdFeB is a rare earth permanent magnet alloy and is used in the world’s strongest commercially available magnet, with a wide range of use cases, from mobile phones to wind turbines.
The NdFeB alloy was made from the 200 kilograms of ferro-neodymium (FeNd) alloy produced by ASM at its metallisation pilot plant in early November.
KIRAM, the company’s manufacturing partner, has certified the metallic structure and ratio of the product – 67 per cent iron, 32 per cent neodymium, 1 per cent boron – and confirmed its suitability for rare earth permanent magnet production.
“Important milestone”
ASM managing director David Woodall said: “The successful production of this NdFeB alloy is an important milestone for ASM and paves the way for integrating production of key rare earth permanent magnet alloys into our developing metals business.”
Woodall said the next step was to produce a further 7 kilograms of the alloy for conversion into initial permanent magnet samples to be evaluated by the Korean magnet industry.
ASM is also investigating the potential of developing a higher-volume continuous metal production facility based in Korea that would include the production of more NdFeB alloy.
Shares in ASM have been as much as 7 per cent higher on the news to $4.08 while market cap sits at approximately $453.6 million.
End-to-end process
ASM sources its metals for products such as neodymium magnets from its fully-owned Dubbo Project, a large in-ground polymetallic resource of zirconium, rare earths, niobium, hafnium, tantalum and yttrium, 25 kilometres south of Dubbo in Central West NSW.
Those metals were then used by ASM’s Ziron Tech team in Korea to produce 200 kilograms of FeNd, a key rare earth alloy used to make sintered permanent magnets.
Sintered permanent magnets have high magnetic strength and heat resistance and are essential for advanced and clean technologies including electric vehicles.
ASM’s metallisation process and pilot plant have significant environmental advantages over industry-standard processes, emitting far less energy.