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Rowena Duckworth
Osmond Resources is looking beyond the drill bit and into the value chain, progressing multiple downstream product initiatives tied to its Orión EU critical minerals project in southern Spain.
Orión EU hosts a suite of minerals listed by the European Union as critical raw materials, strategically important to the bloc’s industrial and defence supply chains. These include rutile, zircon and monazite – the primary sources of titanium, zirconium, hafnium and rare earth elements.
As such, Osmond is strategically positioning Orión not just as a mineral discovery but as a potential vertically integrated critical minerals play within Europe.
Following encouraging early drilling and the sheer size of its 228-square-kilometre permit area in Andalucía, the company believes Orión has the potential to deliver strong grade at meaningful scale. That combination, if confirmed through ongoing work programs, could give Osmond a competitive advantage in supplying strategic minerals into an EU market actively seeking to reduce reliance on imports.
‘We have the potential to have unrivalled grade and scale of rare earths, rutile (titanium), zircon and silica.’
Osmond Resources chief executive officer and managing director Anthony Hall
The company is now running parallel workstreams to examine downstream product options across rare earths, titanium (from the mineral rutile) and silicon. These initiatives are designed to capture additional value beyond concentrate production and potentially open funding avenues from Spanish and EU government-backed support programs.
Osmond is also working with various industry partners to advance metallurgical and product-related test work, supported by a 150kg bulk sample that has provided sufficient material for early-stage downstream evaluation.
The bulk rock channel samples collected across the Avellanar Zone – or Zone 1 – returned some encouraging results, including rutile between 13.36 and 13.49 per cent, zircon up to 9.79 per cent, monazite as high as 1.62 per cent and total rare earth oxides (TREO) up to 1.18 per cent. Heavy mineral content reached as high as 32.8 per cent in one sample. These figures underscore the potential grade profile Osmond is aiming to leverage.
The Orión EU project in southern Spain’s Jaén Province is hosted mainly in the Ordovician Pochico Formation, a quartzite sequence interpreted as a lithified placer sand system. In geological terms, the heavy minerals were initially concentrated in ancient coastal or near-shore environments before being cemented and cooked into quartzite over geologic time. A key attraction of the system is that the mineralisation occurs within predictable, relatively flat-lying layers.
Osmond Resources chief executive officer and managing director Anthony Hall said: “Based on our initial drilling success and the size of our permit area, we think we have the potential to have unrivalled grade and scale of rare earths, rutile (titanium), zircon and silica. Given this, we are progressing product-related initiatives with leading industry partners to leverage our potential competitive advantage into opportunities that we believe could disrupt existing markets.”
Titanium, as a finished product of one of Orion’s key elements, rutile, is a cornerstone metal for aerospace, defence and medical applications, while zircon and zirconium play vital roles in ceramics, refractories and nuclear technologies. Hafnium, which rarely occurs in economic concentrations, is prized for use in nuclear control rods and high-temperature alloys.
Elsewhere, Osmond also wholly owns the Iberian One kaolinite and alunite project in central Spain and is exploring options with both the global geochemistry giant SGS and the University of Salamanca to fast-track the development and local production of alumina, potash, and graphite.
In a European landscape increasingly focused on securing a domestic supply of strategic raw materials, Osmond’s portfolio and timing could prove significant. The European Critical Raw Materials Act is designed to fast-track projects deemed strategically important, with Brussels targeting 10 per cent domestic extraction and 40 per cent processing of annual EU consumption by 2030.
Set against that backdrop, a scalable rare earths–rutile–silicon system in Spain offers significance far beyond the rocks themselves.
If Orión can prove competitive grades alongside downstream processing potential, it would put Osmond at a clear advantage as a strategic pillar in a jurisdiction determined to unwind its reliance on Chinese supply chains.
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