Australian Mines Limited (ASX: AUZ), an ASX-listed company focused on sourcing critical battery minerals, including nickel and cobalt, has announced promising results from its aircore drilling program at the Flemington Project. The results confirm expansion potential and broad, exceptional, near-surface scandium grades compared to the 2025 Mineral Resource Estimate of 446ppm scandium. Australian Mines is also developing proprietary technology for scandium-doped metal hydride hydrogen storage.
Notable intercepts from the drilling include 18m @ 597 ppm Sc from 2m, 12m @ 615 ppm Sc from 13m, and 16m @ 552 ppm Sc from 3m. Drilling to the North and East has confirmed the potential for resource expansion. Maximum 1m assays included 1m @ 1,262 ppm Sc, 1m @ 0.64% Ni, and 1m @ 0.54% Co. Follow-up drilling is scheduled to commence by the end of February 2026.
CEO Andrew Nesbitt commented, “These aircore results confirm broad, high-grade scandium mineralisation from surface and demonstrate clear potential to expand beyond the current resource footprint.” Australian Mines has engaged SRK Consulting to update the 2017 scoping study for the Flemington project. The updated study will prioritize the production of scandium.
The 2017 scoping study indicated a substantial positive NPV and an IRR of 37.3% when using a scandium oxide price of USD1,500,000 per tonne. It contemplated an 18-year life processing 100,000t annually, producing 50t of scandium oxide per annum with the potential to extend the life of mine up to 45 years. The updated study will use the latest MRE of 6.3Mt @ 446ppm Sc at a 300ppm cut-off, compared to the 3.1mt grading at 434 grams per tonne of scandium used previously.
