Niocorp Developments Ltd (NB)

[Middleborder]

Chico; Article from 2020; I would not doubt this was previously posted, but if so posting again for new NioCorp investors:

Why Scandium Could be a Huge Opportunity

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A recent Kaiser Research report on scandium details the wide variety of end uses for scandium now and into the future, as well as where potential supply to meet that demand may originate. As Kaiser has explained, “There’s an enormous latent demand for scandium if it ever became available on a primary, scalable basis.”

In other words, the only barrier to accessing demand from a whole new family of high-performance aluminum materials and energy/lighting products is the lack of a commercially viable larger-scale scandium production. Interestingly, Kaiser’s work highlights two important scandium market events in recent months that may “have the potential to launch scandium demand growth over the next decade towards a 1,000 (tonne per annum) market worth $2 billion.”

For one, Rio Tinto (NYSE:RIO,ASX:RIO,LSE:RIO) announced in early 2020 that it has developed a route to recovery for scandium at its Sorel-Tracy facility in Quebec, where it produces titanium slag from the Lac Tio iron-titanium deposit.

Secondly, Scandium International Mining filed an application in late 2019 for a patent protecting a method for recovering scandium and other metals from the waste streams of copper oxide leaching operations. In mid-2020, the company announced that copper raffinate tests showed there is enough recoverable scandium using its patent-pending process to match the supply growth coming from Rio Tinto’s recovery of scandium from its titanium upgrading slag.

“Conditions are finally right for scandium to become the ideal lightweighting solution for aluminum,” said Kaiser in his note.

Its irritating that the article does not list Elk Creek among the potential Scandium sources, but does make the point that the Market for Scandium will grow as it becomes increasingly available. (Yes, we hear that pretty often.)