Axel REE Leaches 95% Gallium, 74% Scandium at Tiger Creek

Axel REE reported 95% gallium extraction and 74% scandium extraction from Tiger Creek samples at its Caladão project, with the company saying high purity was achieved in leach testwork.

Axel REE says leach testwork on samples from its Tiger Creek prospect recovered 95% of contained gallium and 74% of contained scandium, and that the resulting solutions reached high purity. The results, reported at the company's Caladão project, matter less for the tonnage they imply — there is none yet — than for what they say about chemistry: two metals that Western buyers currently struggle to source outside China appear to report to the same leach.

Why a leach number is the whole story in gallium

Gallium is almost never mined for its own sake. Globally it is a by-product, stripped from the caustic liquor of alumina refining or, less commonly, from zinc processing. That structure is why the metal has become a chokepoint: a buyer cannot simply commission a gallium mine, because gallium output is set by somebody else's aluminium economics. Scandium has a similar problem for different reasons — it is widely disseminated in small concentrations, rarely concentrated enough to justify a standalone operation, and demand has historically been throttled by the fact that there was never reliable supply to design around.

So for both metals, the question that decides whether a deposit is interesting is not grade in isolation. It is recovery. A rock that carries gallium in a mineral lattice that will not release it under reasonable conditions is a geological curiosity. A rock that gives up 95% of its gallium in a leach is a potential feedstock. Axel REE's Stockhead-reported result places Tiger Creek in the second category, at least at bench scale.

The 74% scandium figure is the softer of the two, and it is worth reading it as a starting point rather than a ceiling or a floor. Early leach programs typically test a range of acid strengths, temperatures and residence times; the number a company leads with is usually the best of a matrix, and the number that ends up in a feasibility study is whatever survives optimisation, reagent cost and scale-up. Both directions are possible from here.

Two metals, one flowsheet, one set of fixed costs

The more commercially interesting claim in the announcement is not either recovery on its own but the fact that both metals were leached from the same material at Caladão. Critical-metals projects live or die on whether the revenue from a small-volume, high-value product can carry the fixed cost of a processing plant. Splitting those costs across gallium and scandium — and, given the company's name and orientation, potentially across rare earth elements as well — changes the arithmetic of a project that would struggle to stand on any one of them.

That is the pattern across the sector at the moment. Developers are increasingly pitching polymetallic critical-metals flowsheets rather than single-product mines, on the reasoning that the buyers of these materials are governments and industrial primes who want supply security across a basket, not a single line item. It also hedges the developer against the specific risk of these markets: they are thin, opaque and prone to price moves driven by policy rather than by consumption.

The offsetting risk is complexity. Every additional product in a flowsheet adds a separation step, a purity specification and a qualification cycle with end users. Axel REE's statement that high purity was achieved from the Tiger Creek samples is therefore doing real work in the release — impure gallium or scandium solutions are not saleable, and purification is where a promising leach can quietly become uneconomic.

What buyers of gallium and scandium actually need

Gallium's end markets are semiconductors and defence electronics. Gallium arsenide and gallium nitride devices sit in radar systems, satellite communications, fast chargers and power electronics; gallium nitride in particular has been displacing silicon in high-frequency, high-power applications. These are not high-tonnage markets, but they are strategically sensitive ones, and the customers are the kind that will pay a premium for a supply chain that does not pass through a single jurisdiction.

Scandium's principal use is scandium-aluminium alloy, which is lighter and stronger than conventional aluminium alloys and welds better, plus solid oxide fuel cells. Aerospace has wanted it for decades. The obstacle has always been circular: manufacturers will not design scandium into a component without assured supply, and producers will not build capacity without committed demand. Any new source that can demonstrate consistent, high-purity output is effectively bidding to break that loop.

That is the context in which a bench-scale recovery number from an early-stage project gets attention it would not get for a more ordinary metal. The bar is not "is this the best deposit in the world" — it is "is this a credible non-Chinese unit of supply".

The distance between a bench result and a plant

Investors reading testwork announcements should hold several caveats at once. Bench-scale leach recoveries are performed on selected, often finely ground samples under controlled conditions; pilot-scale and continuous operation almost always give ground on recovery, reagent consumption or both. The samples came from Tiger Creek, a prospect, not from a defined resource — which means there is as yet no published statement of how much material behaves this way. And the economics of gallium and scandium extraction turn heavily on acid cost, neutralisation and waste handling, none of which a recovery percentage speaks to.

What would move this from metallurgy to a project is a sequence: variability testwork across different rock types, a maiden resource that gives the recoveries a tonnage to apply to, pilot work that holds the numbers at scale, and — most decisively for these particular metals — an offtake or funding relationship with a customer or a government agency that cares about supply security.

The market backdrop for speculative critical-metals names

Early-stage explorers in this space trade on news flow, and news flow is what this is. The broader risk environment at the end of the most recent session was mixed rather than supportive: the S&P 500 tracker SPY closed at $770.23, down 0.38% on the day, while the Nasdaq 100 tracker QQQ finished at $719.00, up 0.19%, and the Dow tracker DIA closed at $534.12, down 0.52%, all as of the last trade on 4 September 2026. That split — technology holding up while the broader indices slipped — is at least directionally consistent with where gallium demand ultimately comes from, though nothing in an index close says anything about a single junior's prospects.

For now, Tiger Creek is a chemistry result with a strategic label attached. The 95% gallium figure is the headline; the 74% scandium figure and the purity claim are what will decide whether the next set of announcements is about optimisation or about a resource.

Key facts

• Gallium extraction: 95% from Tiger Creek samples
• Scandium extraction: 74% from Tiger Creek samples
• Project: Caladão, where both metals were shown to leach
• Market backdrop: SPY closed $770.23, -0.38%, as of 4 Sep 2026 20:00 GMT

Frequently asked questions

What did Axel REE report at Tiger Creek?

Axel REE reported metallurgical leach testwork on samples from its Tiger Creek prospect that extracted 95% of the contained gallium and 74% of the contained scandium. The company said the work, associated with its Caladão project, showed both metals can be leached and that high purity was achieved from the Tiger Creek samples.

Why is gallium considered a supply-constrained metal?

Gallium is almost never mined on its own. It is recovered as a by-product of alumina refining and, less often, zinc processing, so its output is governed by another industry's economics rather than by gallium demand. That structure, combined with heavy geographic concentration of refining capacity, makes it difficult for Western buyers to secure independent supply.

What is scandium used for?

Scandium's main commercial application is scandium-aluminium alloy, valued in aerospace and transport for being lighter and stronger than conventional aluminium alloys and easier to weld. It is also used in solid oxide fuel cells. Adoption has historically been limited less by demand interest than by the absence of reliable, consistent supply.

Does a 95% leach recovery mean the project is economic?

No. A recovery figure from bench-scale testwork says the metal can be released from the rock under laboratory conditions. It says nothing about how much rock there is, what reagents cost, whether the result holds at pilot and commercial scale, or whether the final product meets customer purity specifications. Those steps come later.

Why does leaching two metals from the same material matter?

Critical-metals projects carry high fixed processing costs against small production volumes. Recovering more than one saleable product from a single flowsheet spreads those costs across multiple revenue lines, which can make a project viable that would not stand on either metal alone. The trade-off is added separation and purification complexity.

What should investors watch next from Axel REE?

The logical sequence is variability testwork across different rock types to check the recoveries hold, a maiden mineral resource giving the metallurgy a tonnage to apply to, pilot-scale work to confirm bench results at continuous operation, and any offtake or government supply-security arrangement, which for gallium and scandium is often the decisive commercial step.

Sources

• Axel REE roars with 95pc gallium and 74pc scandium extraction at Tiger Creek — Stockhead Resources

Photo: Carlos Garcia · Pexels Licence — source