Blog

Mar 22, 2024

WA1 Resources, a great niobium find but what is this about scandium?

WA1 Resources (ASX: WA1) is up another 30% or so on further results from their drilling of their niobium find. That niobium is an interesting and valuable metal is entirely true, that production is

WA1 Resources (ASX: WA1) is up another 30% or so on further results from their drilling of their niobium find. That niobium is an interesting and valuable metal is entirely true, that production is hugely concentrated in Brazil is equally true and there are many who would like to see a greater geographical spread. So, yes, a good deposit of niobium is an interesting thing to have. Assuming that the numbers all stack up then it somewhere between could and should be brought into production.

But there's something to worry about here. It might seem like a strange detail but it is something that worries. For they're talking about the scandium content of the material. This is again one of those true things - it exists, the Sc is there, this is normal for this mineral. But the worry becomes that they might think that it's valuable. For we have seen this before with another potential niobium miner, Niocorp. In fact, Niocorp is intending to run a full on scandium mine, not a niobium one - that's what their finances depend upon at least. And that's something that simply is not going to work. The market for scandium simply is not there in that size.

WA1 Resources share price from ASX

If we look at the latest announcement of the drill results we see that they do pull out that scandium number. Some of them are high - 150 ppm, 240 ppm, those are high Sc concentrations. If they're listed just to be complete about the information then that's fine. But if they're listed so as to try to demonstrate the value of the find then that's not. Not to my mind at least it isn't. Because the scandium market globally is tiny - 20 tonnes a year maybe. So anyone thinking that they can extract and sell in volume is going to be deeply disappointed.

So much so that a basic rule would be that anyone talking about scandium values has to be looked at somewhat askance. That's what worries here.