Highlights

  • Strategic Partnership Projects Agreement (No. NFE 25 10985) executed with UT Battelle, LLC — operator of Oak Ridge National Laboratory — under US Department of Energy Prime Contract.
  • Programme targets the development of an economical method for recovering Heavy Rare Earth Elements plus Yttrium (HREE+Y) from Garnet Hills andradite garnet, over a fixed term concluding 31 March 2027.
  • Total financial commitment capped at US$100,000 for the programme term, consistent with existing R&D budget allocations.

Pure Resources’ (ASX:PR1) announcement of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Partnership, released on 1 May 2026, represents one of the most strategically significant corporate developments since the company's listing. The establishment of a formal research Partnership with the US Department of Energy's largest multi-programme science and energy laboratory positions Pure Resources within the US critical materials ecosystem — a category of strategic importance that has received increasing policy attention and funding from both the US and Australian governments. The commercial and reputational implications of this Partnership for a micro-cap exploration and advanced materials company are substantial, even if the immediate financial impact is modest.

The Agreement: Structure and Scope

Pure Resources has executed a formal Strategic Partnership Projects (SPP) Agreement with UT Battelle, LLC — the Facility management contractor operating Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) under US Department of Energy Prime Contract DE-AC05-00OR22725. The SPP framework is the formal mechanism through which US DOE national laboratories partner with non-government sponsors where the research activity complements the DOE mission and leverages specialist laboratory capability unavailable in the domestic private sector. The fact that ORNL's own Statement of Work expressly confirms that no domestic US companies are currently pursuing garnet as a rare earth and yttrium resource is significant: it establishes a unique and uncontested research focus.

The programme, titled Development of an Economical Method for the Recovery of REE Values from Industrial Garnet, will be conducted across four research tasks over the programme term ending 31 March 2027. Task 1 involves identifying high HREE+Y garnet feedstock from the Garnet Hills Project and generating high-precision concentration data. Task 2 involves digestion experiments to assess the Economics and effectiveness of REE+Y liberation into aqueous solution. Task 3 applies selected existing separation and purification protocols to the digested garnet solutions. Task 4 produces a final project report and an industrial design pathway suitable for Patent filing and commercialisation. The programme principal investigator is Dr N. Alex Zirakparvar of ORNL's Chemical Science Division, a published specialist in garnet geochemistry whose prior research independently identified the HREE+Y endowment of certain garnet populations.

The Garnet Hills Project: A Dual-Commodity Opportunity

The Garnet Hills Project is located in Western Australia under a granted Mining Lease (M80/416) in the Reedy Creek area. The project has historically been characterised as an industrial garnet and graphite asset, with the garnet product targeted at the industrial abrasives market under a MIL-SPEC qualification programme. The ORNL programme introduces the possibility that the same garnet material could be processed to extract economically significant quantities of Heavy Rare Earth Elements and Yttrium, potentially transforming the project from a single-Commodity industrial minerals asset into a dual-pathway industrial and critical minerals asset.

The geological rationale for this potential is grounded in the mineralogy of andradite garnet — the calcium-iron garnet species present at Garnet Hills. Andradite is structurally receptive to the substitution of heavy rare earth elements into its crystal lattice, and in skarn-hosted geological settings such as Garnet Hills, this substitution can produce anomalously elevated HREE+Y grades. The economic viability of extracting these HREE+Y values depends critically on the outcomes of the Tasks 2 and 3 research — specifically, whether the rare earths can be liberated and separated at a cost that is commercially competitive — and it is these questions that the ORNL research programme is designed to answer.

Strategic Importance of HREE+Y: A Defence and Technology Imperative

The strategic significance of Heavy Rare Earth Elements and Yttrium in contemporary defence and technology applications cannot be overstated. HREE+Y — specifically dysprosium, terbium, erbium, thulium, ytterbium, lutetium and yttrium — are essential inputs to neodymium-iron-boron permanent magnets, which underpin electric vehicle traction motors, offshore wind turbines, precision-guided munitions, radar, sonar systems and naval propulsion systems. Dysprosium and terbium in particular confer the high-temperature performance required in the most demanding defence and aerospace magnet applications.

Global production of HREE+Y is currently heavily concentrated in a single foreign Jurisdiction — China — and the United States imports substantially all of its HREE+Y requirements. This Supply chain vulnerability has driven an aggressive US government push to develop domestic and ally-nation sources of critical minerals, with the DOE, Department of Defense, and US-Australia Critical Minerals Framework all mobilised in support of Supply chain Diversification. Pure Resources, with an Australian asset and a DOE national laboratory partner, sits at an intersection of Supply chain priority that is commercially and geopolitically well-timed.

Complementary Downstream Strategy

The ORNL Partnership complements Pure Resources' existing Downstream research activities. The company is already executing a funded R&D collaboration with Rice University, focused on carbon nanotube fibre (CNTF) thermal management technology for AI data centre infrastructure and defence applications, using graphite from the Garnet Hills Project. The combination of the ORNL rare earth programme and the Rice University CNTF programme means Pure Resources is pursuing multiple Downstream value-add pathways from a single Upstream Australian hard rock asset — a strategy management describes as maximising returns from a mine-to-market approach.

The company has also outlined plans to initiate a formal US Department of Defense engagement programme in parallel with the ORNL research, targeting grant, co-Investment, offtake and qualification pathways across defence and energy agencies. The institutional framework for this engagement includes Defence Production Act Title III, the Office of Strategic Capital, the Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment programme, and the AUKUS Pillar 2 framework. While these engagements will take time to mature, the ORNL Partnership provides a credible technical anchor for these conversations.

Financial Commitment and IP Arrangements

Pure Resources' total financial commitment under the ORNL agreement is capped at US$100,000 for the programme term — a figure that management described as consistent with the company's ordinary course operational spend on metallurgical and chemical testwork, not representing a material incremental cost. On the intellectual property side, Pure may retain title to subject inventions it makes under the engagement, subject to the United States Government retaining an irrevocable, paid-up, non-exclusive worldwide licence to practise any resulting inventions. Subject inventions made by ORNL remain governed by ORNL's prime contract with the DOE. This IP structure is standard for DOE laboratory partnerships and provides Pure with meaningful commercial rights over discoveries made during the programme.