American Rare Earths’ Halleck Creek project in Wyoming has secured a Seed Translational Acceleration of Research (STAR) award via the University of Wyoming’s NSF Accelerating Research Translation programme to study byproducts and tailings from rare earth extraction. The work, led by Tyler Brown at UW’s School of Energy Resources, will assess technical viability, processing requirements and end-use applications for these materials and their impact on project economics. Halleck Creek metallurgical tests have already upgraded ore from 0.34% to 3.72% TREO, removing 93.5% of non-rare earth material early so only 6.5% requires further refining.

South32’s Australian operations have rebounded in the first half of FY26, with stronger output from its manganese and zinc businesses lifting group production and offsetting weaker contributions from some overseas assets. The turnaround centres on operations such as GEMCO and Cannington, where higher ore grades and improved plant availability have supported increased concentrate and alloy volumes. For mine planners and process engineers, the performance points to continued investment in brownfield debottlenecking and reliability upgrades rather than major greenfield capacity additions in the near term.

New Murchison Gold has logged a fourth straight month of rising output from its Crown Prince underground mine in Western Australia, following the first production blast at the newly developed Crown Prince lode. The operation is ramping up stoping and ore haulage from fresh development headings, feeding higher-grade material into the existing New Murchison processing circuit rather than building new plant. For mine planners and geotechs, the sustained lift signals stable ground conditions and successful sequencing of new stopes, with scope to refine drilling, blasting and backfill strategies as production scales.