News

Welcome to our newsroom. Here you’ll find the latest milestones, partnerships, and technical breakthroughs as we advance our mission to deliver sustainable processing solutions for critical minerals. Our progress reflects a commitment to innovation, commercial readiness, and global critical minerals security.

31 August 2025

Pilot plant design complete; procurement underway
Design of our pilot plant is complete, and procurement is now underway. This marks a major step toward plant commissioning in mid-December, where we will demonstrate our proprietary monazite-to-REO process at a 0.1 tpa scale.

3 June 2025

Pilot plant backed by federal commercialisation grant
Our pilot plant project has been awarded a $250,000 Early-Stage Commercialisation Grant through the Industry Growth Program run by the Department of Industry, Science and Resources (Cth). This support accelerates our path to market for processing monazite into mixed rare earth oxides.

27 May 2024

Selected for National Energy Transition Accelerator (NETA)
We’ve joined the National Energy Transition Accelerator, a Trailblazer initiative led by Curtin University, University of Queensland, and James Cook University, supporting Australian founders to build sustainable business models around technical innovation for the clean energy transition.

15 May 2024

UK patent granted for dissolution process
We’ve secured UK Patent GB2604810, strengthening our IP portfolio around our novel rare earth dissolution process.

24 April 2024

Accepted into CSIRO’s Innovate to Grow program
We’re proud to be part of CSIRO’s Innovate to Grow program, gaining access to expert mentorship and R&D strategy development to strengthen our commercialisation pathway.

16 February 2024

Innovation Booster Project completed
This project successfully tested a method to recycle materials used to collect waste elements in our downstream process, improving sustainability and reducing reagent consumption.

16 January 2024

Industry Growth Program participation
We are actively participating in the Industry Growth Program run by the Department of Industry, Science and Resources of the Australian Government. This program supports early-stage commercialisation and investment readiness for our critical minerals processing technology.

1 July 2023

Advisory board appointment: Thomas Kim
We welcomed Thomas Kim as the inaugural member of our advisory board. Thomas brings over 25 years of deep corporate experience to guide our strategic growth.

26 June 2023

Innovation Booster Grant awarded
We received a $32,000 Innovation Booster Grant from the WA Department of Jobs, Tourism, Science and Innovation, enabling early-stage validation of our downstream recycling process.

27 June 2023

Industrial facility secured in Mandurah
We’ve leased our first industrial facility in Mandurah, Western Australia, providing a dedicated base for R&D, pilot operations, and future scale-up.

30 April 2022

Technology tested on La Paz deposit (USA)
We tested our proprietary process on concentrate from American Rare Earths’ La Paz deposit, demonstrating adaptability of our process to additional feedstocks. A link to the ASX press release is here.

17 January 2022

US defense contract completed with breakthrough results
We have completed contract SP8000-21-P0012 with the Defense Logistics Agency - Strategic Materials (U.S.A.). During this program of laboratory research, we achieved:

• Confirmation of our leaching process through a rigorous scientific study, published after peer review. 

• Development of a simple downstream process to recover rare earths from the leaching solution in a saleable form.

• 92% recovery of light rare earths from coarse monazite sand without grinding.

• A product grade of 99 wt.% with no detectable thorium, uranium or phosphorus, and

• Quantitative rejection of thorium in a single stage for low-volume disposal.

Watts & Fisher has demonstrated it can successfully produce a market-grade mixed rare earth oxide product from coarse monazite sand. 

27 August 2021

Leaching process article published
We published a technical article detailing our leaching process, contributing to the global knowledge base on rare earth extraction.

20 November 2020

International patent filed
We have filed an International Patent Application for our dissolution process with applications including the dissolution of rare earths from ores such as monazite. 

18 November 2020

Research contract award – US Defense Logistics Agency (US DLA)
We are excited to announce we have been awarded a $152,000 USD contract from Defense Logistics Agency (U.S.A.), contract SP8000-21-P0012, to develop a process to produce purified mixed rare earths from ores associated with mineral sand deposits.