Victory Metals’ North Stanmore pilot: 60x TREO upgrade and flowsheet lessons for engineers
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell

First reported on Australian Mining
30 Second Briefing
Victory Metals has achieved a near-60-fold upgrade in rare earth concentration at its Perth continuous pilot plant for the North Stanmore project in Western Australia, upgrading feed grading 1195ppm total rare earth oxides (TREO) to a high‑grade concentrate. The pilot‑scale campaign validates the flowsheet at continuous operation rather than batch scale, a key step before full‑scale plant design and capital estimates. For process and project engineers, the result materially improves the potential economics of North Stanmore’s clay‑hosted rare earths by sharply reducing downstream mass pull.
Technical Brief
- Continuous pilot-scale testing was conducted at Victory Metals’ Perth facility rather than on-site at North Stanmore.
- Feed material for the campaign came directly from the North Stanmore clay-hosted rare earths deposit in WA.
Our Take
The near-60-fold concentration upgrade at the North Stanmore pilot plant follows Victory Metals’ earlier metallurgical breakthrough reported on 29 April 2026, signalling that the flowsheet for these clay-hosted rare earths is maturing unusually quickly compared with most early-stage REE projects in our database.
With North Stanmore already accepted into the US Defense Industrial Base Consortium, demonstrable high upgrade factors for total rare earth oxides materially strengthen Victory Metals’ case for future offtake or strategic support linked to defence supply chains, especially for heavy rare earths.
Recent coverage shows multiple North Stanmore milestones in rapid succession (Native Title Mining Agreement, PFS progress, DIBC acceptance and now pilot-plant performance), which suggests Victory Metals is deliberately de-risking both permitting and processing in parallel to compress the project’s development timeline in Western Australia.
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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