AR3’s Travis Beinke on Building Australia’s Next Rare Earth Giant

Australian Rare Earths Limited (ASX: AR3) is aiming to transform a clay discovery into one of the most strategically important rare earth projects in the Western world. “Australian Rare Earths is advancing an ionic clay project in South Australia,” said Managing Director Travis Beinke. “The discovery was made back in 2020. The company IPO’d in 2021. Since then, we’ve drilled out a large resource of some 240 million tonnes at a TREO of 750 ppm.” Within that lies a higher-grade subset of around 70 million tonnes at 1,000 ppm, a scale Beinke described as more than sufficient to begin development. “We’re not going to be resource constrained and will be able to continue to grow the resource over time,” he emphasized.The company’s flagship Koppamurra Rare Earths Project, located across South Australia and Victoria, has already attracted substantial government backing. “In December last year, we were awarded a $5 million grant from the Australian government under the International Partnerships in Critical Minerals Program,” Beinke said. The co-funded program will provide $10 million of spending over 2025 and 2026 to advance metallurgical test work, the Pre-Feasibility Study, a demonstration facility, and regulatory approvals. The company recently confirmed receipt of a $1 million instalment of that grant, bringing total support to $1.75 million, with the balance due in 2026. “That $5 million grant is certainly going to help us make significant inroads in progressing the project,” Beinke noted.For Beinke, who spent two decades in mining including at OZ Minerals prior to its BHP acquisition, the appeal of leading Australian Rare Earths was both personal and strategic. “Why I was attracted to this project is the opportunity to take a new project in my home state of South Australia and create something new for the local community, the local industry, and bring a new mine into production,” he explained. “Rare earths were obviously a commodity and sector I hadn’t had exposure to, but I could certainly understand the importance of the thematic around the clean energy transition and the important part that rare earths will play.”The company is also diversifying. Over the past 18 months, Australian Rare Earths has built a portfolio of uranium exploration projects in South Australia, capitalizing on the team’s deep expertise in the commodity. “There are only three uranium operating mines in Australia, and they’re all located in South Australia,” Beinke said. “So it’s a great jurisdiction to be advancing uranium projects.”On the commercial side, the company has secured a non-binding agreement with Neo Performance Materials for half of the offtake from Stage One of Koppamurra. “They’ve been a great technical support over the last three or four years as we’ve worked through test work in producing a mixed rare earth carbonate—the product that we would sell to customers like Neo,” Beinke said. “Because of the nature of our deposit being a reasonably enriched heavy rare earth assemblage—we’re at a 1:7 heavy to light rare earth ratio—at a time where the market is looking for new supply of heavy rare earths, we feel it’s a great opportunity to leverage that with potential customers.”Looking ahead, Beinke said the market should expect results from ongoing test work by year’s end and the release of the Pre-Feasibility Study early next year. “The heap leach approach versus a tank leach, which a lot of the clay projects are pursuing, means it’s going to be a significantly lower capital cost compared to the $500–600 million that some of these other projects are looking at,” he explained. “Ours will be orders of magnitude lower.” In his view, that advantage, combined with government support and the project’s sovereign, Tier 1 jurisdiction, positions Australian Rare Earths to deliver both heavy and light rare earth supply into global markets at a critical time.