Pure Resources Achieves 98% Garnet Grade and Advances US Collaborations

Metallurgical Breakthrough at Garnet Hills

Pure Resources Limited (ASX – PR1) has reissued its metallurgical results for the Garnet Hills Project in Western Australia's Kimberley region, providing enhanced transparency with detailed sample coordinates and improved mapping. The core findings remain robust – the company’s testwork confirms that simple, scalable processing methods can produce high-grade garnet products with exceptional purity.

Using a comprehensive 2,800kg composite sample derived from 197 outcrop sites, Pure Resources demonstrated that Dense Media Separation (DMS) is the preferred pre-concentration method, achieving garnet deportment exceeding 90%. This process effectively rejects low-density gangue minerals, delivering a clean concentrate with minimal water and no reagents, a significant advantage for both operational costs and environmental sustainability.

Final Product Quality Meets Market Demands

Further refining via Reflux Classification, a lamella-assisted hindered settling technique, produced garnet concentrates grading up to 98% andradite, surpassing industry benchmarks for abrasive blasting and premium waterjet cutting applications. The process yielded two commercially viable size fractions – a coarse fraction tailored for blasting media and a fine fraction suited for high-value waterjet use.

This low-water, reagent-free flowsheet not only simplifies operations but aligns with growing ESG expectations in industrial minerals markets. The high-grade garnet product’s low impurity profile and water-efficient processing position Pure Resources well to meet expanding global demand.

Strategic US Collaborations and Rare Earth Element Potential

Beyond garnet, Pure Resources is actively exploring the extraction of Rare Earth Elements (REE) from industrial garnet, a promising avenue that could add significant value. The company has initiated collaborations with US Department of Energy-funded academic institutions and industry partners, focusing on downstream applications such as thermal management technologies including heat sinks and weapons cooling.

These partnerships underscore Pure’s ambition to evolve from a mineral producer to a technology-aligned supplier of critical minerals, leveraging synergies between its garnet and graphite assets. The company is advancing bulk-scale testing and process optimisation to validate these pathways.

Looking Ahead

Pure Resources plans to expand metallurgical testing to include fresh rock lithologies and middlings reprocessing, aiming to maximise garnet recovery and product quality. A ~5,000m drilling campaign is also planned to verify historical data and support resource expansion. The company’s strategic focus on low-cost, sustainable processing and US market entry initiatives could position Garnet Hills as a globally competitive garnet supplier aligned with industrial growth and ESG trends.