Mount Ridley Mines has delivered the first direct evidence of how rare earth elements are hosted at its Grass Patch project near Esperance, confirming they occur within discrete free-digging phosphate minerals that could crucially unlock a more economic pathway for processing. By potentially upgrading the ore early, Mount Ridley could significantly reduce the volume of material fed into its downstream processing circuit, a move it says could have a considerable impact on both upfront capital and operating costs. The TIMA results inform us exactly how the rare earths sit in our deposit. Some of our peers have had outstanding results applying flotation to comparable regolith hosted HREE deposits and these results provide a basis for Mount Ridley to investigate a similar beneficiation pathway. With its rare earths now defined within phosphate minerals, Mount Ridley may have found its processing secret sauce.