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    Ida Holmes high‑grade cobalt–scandium: pit design and planning notes for engineers

    February 20, 2026|

    Reviewed by Tom Sullivan

    Ida Holmes high‑grade cobalt–scandium: pit design and planning notes for engineers

    First reported on Australian Mining

    30 Second Briefing

    Exploration momentum is building across Australia as multiple juniors advance critical minerals, rare earths and gold projects through new drilling, resource updates and metallurgical testwork. Activity centres on high‑grade cobalt–scandium at Ida Holmes alongside rare earths prospects and emerging gold systems, with companies targeting shallow, open‑pittable mineralisation and scalable processing routes. For geotechnical and mine planners, the focus on near‑surface orebodies and critical‑metal grades signals upcoming demand for detailed pit slope design, geometallurgical characterisation and infrastructure planning in previously underdeveloped districts.

    Technical Brief

    • Rare earths prospects in the same campaign are being tested with aircore and RC drilling combinations.
    • Several juniors reported updated JORC exploration targets, converting earlier conceptual tonnage ranges into constrained volumes.
    • Metallurgical testwork is focusing on leachability of scandium-bearing horizons using atmospheric acid leach routes.
    • Gold systems in parallel programmes are being probed with step-out drilling along interpreted shear-hosted structures.
    • For similar Australian mining plays, shallow oxide-dominant orebodies will drive early geotech on saprolite slope performance.

    Our Take

    Cobalt and scandium appear together in only a small subset of the 42 keyword-matched pieces in our database, signalling that Ida Holmes sits in a relatively niche but strategically important space compared with more common single-commodity critical mineral plays.

    Within the 1082 Mining stories, Australia-hosted critical mineral prospects like Ida Holmes tend to move more quickly into strategic review or JV discussions once high-grade scandium is confirmed, as scandium supply options remain thin outside a few known districts.

    For project developers, combining cobalt, scandium and other critical minerals at a single Australian site often complicates flowsheet design but can materially improve project optionality, allowing operators to pivot towards whichever offtake market (battery metals vs. alloying/rare earths) is strongest at feasibility stage.

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    Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.

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