Russell Mining Pty Ltd is looking for a partner to help develop its Landor rare earths and critical minerals project in the Gascoyne region of WA. We take a closer look at the project’s history and potential.
The history of Russell Mining Pty Ltd harks back to the 1870s, when the grandfather of company director Victor K Russell, Captain Alfred Russell, was accumulating land in the Gascoyne region of Western Australia, just east of Carnarvon at Milli Milli.
More than a century of experience has inspired the development of Russell Mining’s Landor rare earths and critical minerals project, and now Victor is looking for a partner to help elevate Landor to its full potential.
Following Alfred’s untimely death, and after surviving World War I, Eric Russell MC returned to Australia in 1919 with a contract to revitalise the landholdings of his late father’s friend, R E Bush, in the upper Gascoyne.
The Landor and Mt Clere stations evolved from the separation of two million acres, and when the depression came, Eric diversified into mining focusing on gold, copper, lead and zinc in the West Kimberley.
The Napier Range lead mine was established after World War II with the family using army-deferred pay to start exporting lead-zinc from 1946.
After a price collapse in 1956, Victor left school to help support the family, working on family farms and the mine in the Kimberley where he established his own curiosity for mining and exploration.
“I would travel thousands of kilometres working on the mine and during that time, I spent a lot of time searching up and down the Napier Range for other minerals,” Victor told Australian Resources & Investment.
In 1962, Victor, his father and brother Mark open cut the Napier Range mine and exported some 15,000 tonnes of raw ore to Europe averaging over 55 per cent lead until 1966 when the prices again collapsed and the mine was placed on care and maintenance.
After farming at Harvey River in south-west WA, Victor relocated to Landor and began prospecting for base metals in 1970.
In the years since Victor first pegged Landor – which is located approximately 280 kilometres east of Carnarvon – Russell Mining has established 225 square kilometres of ground that is prospective for rare earths and critical minerals such as gallium, tantalite, rubidium and rhodium.
As one of the first movers in the region, Victor said today’s Landor project is the culmination of more than 50 years of mining industry experience. And now other companies are following in his footsteps, with juniors Krakatoa Resources and Kingfisher Mining keenly exploring tenements adjacent to Landor.
Hastings Technology Metals’ Yangibana project, located 70 kilometres north-west of Landor, is on track to start producing rare earths in the second half of 2024.
Victor said Landor “is in the centre” of a belt that spans the Gascoyne province and is associated with rare earths mineralisation. The project is also located on a main road.
“Landor is on the main road that connects Carnarvon to Meekatharra,” he said. “This road is bitumen, so there’s no access problems.
“For any company that wants to put a camp in, do any work or drive there, you can get there with a two-wheel drive. It’s then easy for drilling, putting a mess in or getting fuel.”
As intrigue grows around the rare earths and critical minerals potential of the Gascoyne region, Landor has a bright future, but having survived blood cancer and at 82 years of age, Victor is looking for a partner to drill and develop the project to its full potential.
Landor is represented by three active exploration leases – E 09/2361, E 09/2369 and E 09/2691 – and is underlain by Archaean granites and gneisses with a degraded lateritic soil cover mostly within the northern part of the tenement.
Victor said exploration at Landor has shown the project to host rare earths and critical minerals within carbonatite.
“When I had surface sampling results analysed initially, I found what I was looking for, which was critical minerals and rare earths,” he said. “But last November I discovered that on the north side of the Gascoyne River within our tenements, we have carbonatite that runs over about 13-and-a-half, 14 kilometres.”
Acid and magnetic testing have proven the presence of carbonatites at Landor, which are the world’s primary source of rare earth elements (REEs), niobium and zirconium.
Victor’s discovery of carbonatite followed extensive hand auger drilling to further understand the project’s unique mineralogy. He expects it to be a key selling point when Russell Mining finds its partner.
“This carbonatite is too big for our small company, so we’re looking for a company who can take it over and drill down to basement because the leases are sitting over the top of a paleochannel – a huge channel that runs north and south rather than east and west.”
With the channel about 45m below surface, Victor said the project would suit a mining or exploration company that has the financial capacity to complete a thorough drill program.
“We would need a company who would be able to put a proper drilling program together, drill the carbonatite out and get down to basement to see what layers of REEs or critical minerals are in the clays that sit in the area we’ve already found,” he said.
“I’d really like to make sure the company just didn’t get involved because they are building up a portfolio rather than doing exploration. We are really looking for a company that has the financial strength to do a proper drilling program, but also has the expertise.”
Victor said he’d be asking the partner to pay at least $250,000 of cash upfront – which is similar to what Russell Mining has spent on the project – with Russell Mining to retain a percentage of the project.
As for Russell Mining’s long-term goals for Landor, Victor said if a mine was to be developed, he expected minerals to be processed in a similar fashion to Hastings’ Yangibana project.
“Because Yangibana are building a rare earths plant at Onslow, where they’ll cart refined concentrate over to the coast to treat, I would say that if we’ve got the mineral that we think we’ve got, we’ll be doing the same thing,” he said.
“Whether Hastings process our ore or not, I don’t know, but certainly the infrastructure is there to take the material across and process it in the same area.”
Victor said the Landor project also has road access to processing facilities further south at Mt Weld in Kalgoorlie.
“We’ve got bitumen coming down from Meekatharra and that goes through to Kalgoorlie as well,” he said. “So if Lynas is processing its material in Kalgoorlie, we could probably get our material down there as it’s bitumen all the way.
“The bitumen is huge in Western Australia, and you don’t have to maintain it because that’s taken care of by the Commonwealth or the state.”
Through centuries of mining and exploration, Russell Mining Pty Ltd knows the Gascoyne region like the back of its hand, with the Landor project just the latest chapter in this storied family journey.
To find out more about the Landor project, you can contact Victor Russell at kimvickr@gmail.com.
This feature appeared in the April–May edition of Australian Resources & Investment.