Alcore Permanent CEO Appointment
Sydney, Jan 13, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Australian Bauxite Limited (
ASX:ABX) (A7B:FRA) is pleased to advise that Dr Mark Cooksey has permanently joined ABx's technology subsidiary ALCORE Limited (Alcore).
Dr Cooksey was first appointed General Manager of Alcore (ASX 24 January 2020) and then CEO (ASX 24 August 2020), on a leave arrangement from Australia's national science agency, CSIRO. This appointment is now permanent, and he will lead Alcore's development and commercialisation of a new process for aluminium fluoride (AlF3) production.
Dr Cooksey brings to Alcore an impressive history in research, development and commercialisation of new processes in the minerals and metals industry. He commenced his career as a Research Engineer in aluminium smelting with Comalco (now Rio Tinto Alcan) in 1997 and became a Senior Research Engineer in 2000. Mark joined CSIRO in 2004 as a Senior Research Engineer and become a Senior Principal Research Leader in 2016.
Dr Cooksey holds a PhD (Chemical & Materials Engineering), Bachelor of Engineering (Materials - First Class Honours) and Bachelor of Science (Information Technology and Applied Mathematics). He has worked closely with aluminium and other metal industries, and his significant experience in commercialising new technologies and processes will enable Alcore to transition into the next phase of development.
Welcoming Dr Cooksey, Ian Levy, ABx's CEO, commented: "In the last 12 months Mark has been instrumental in accelerating Alcore's technical and commercial development, and we deeply appreciate CSIRO for facilitating this arrangement. Alcore is now beginning to scale-up the technology to larger scale production and needs the highly skilled and experienced leadership that Mark can provide. This is an important step in the delivery of value from the Alcore initiative to all shareholders."
RESULTS KEEP IMPROVING
Under Mark's guidance over recent months, Alcore has demonstrated:
- Repeated recovery of fluorine from aluminium smelter waste provided by multiple suppliers
- Consistent production of AlF3 with composition meeting commercial chemical and physical specifications (see Table 1). The chemical analysis was performed by CSIRO
- Prevention of key impurities in bauxite from reacting with fluorine acids, allowing the impurities to remain as solids that can be separated from the AlF3 solution during processing
Current Alcore activities
1. Conducting engineering validation, which is likely to include a pilot plant for critical process steps, to:
- Confirm process and product performance at a larger scale
- Produce larger samples for evaluation by aluminium smelters
2. Conducting process verification experiments in the laboratory to:
- Produce AlF3 from bauxite and aluminium smelter waste of equivalent quality to that produced from aluminium hydroxide
- Optimise the recovery of fluorine from aluminium smelter waste, including the separation and recovery of by-products with potential commercial value
Government & Industry
Discussions continue with governments, agencies, engineering experts and major companies in the aluminium industry. Alcore considers AlF3 to be a strategically important mineral product.
To view tables and figures, please visit:
https://abnnewswire.net/lnk/E174IZ31
About ABx Group Limited
ABx Group Limited (ABx) (ASX:ABX) started as a bauxite miner in Tasmania in 2014 & controls the Eastern Australian Bauxite Province. In 2020 to 2023, ABx also discovered Australia’s only true ionic adsorption clay Rare Earth Elements resource at Deep Leads in pine plantations 40km west of Launceston with a JORC-compliant resource of 89 million tonnes from only 29% of the mineralised outline, averaging 844 ppm total rare earth oxides that is the most enriched in the critically important rare earths, Dy and Tb, of any Australian REE deposit.
ABx has also developed a proprietary technology to produce fluorine chemicals from an aluminium smelter waste product and return the fluorine back into the smelters, thus reducing reliance on imported aluminium fluoride.
ABx has committed a large proportion of its expenditure into Research and Development and has found ways to capitalise on the main strengths of its bauxite type which is very clean, free of all deleterious elements and can be separated into different product streams using physical, chemical and geophysical methods. It has produced and marketed specialist bauxite products for the manufacturers of fertiliser, cement with high late strength for major infrastructure such as bridges and is in the advanced stages of approvals for production of metallurgical bauxite from its Binjour Bauxite deposit with JORC-compliant resources of 37 million tonnes of bauxite, in a joint development with a Chinese-focussed Australian trading company Good Importing International.
ABx is also preparing to produce fertiliser grade and cement grade bauxite from its DL130 bauxite quarry in northern Tasmania, 40km west of Launceston. This quarry is sited in the middle of the large Deep Leads REE deposit and may one day be a site for heap leaching of the REE using a low-cost, benign leachate with the same acidity as apple juice or tea.
ABx endorses best practices on agricultural land, strives to leave land and environment better than we find it. We only operate where welcomed.
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