Stans Energy Corp (TSX-V: HRE) added more than 10% on Wednesday after announcing the successful separation of dysprosium oxide at its Kashka plant in Kyrgyzstan ahead of schedule.
The company said 50kg of the heavy rare earth dysprosium with 99.9% purity was separated from resins remaining from past production runs.
Historically the plant has refined REEs from the Kutessay II mine in the former Soviet Republic which Stans Energy acquired in 2009.
The company says for over 30 years, Kutessay II produced 80% of the rare earth metals for the former Soviet Union and the Kashka processing facility which the company bough just over a year ago was the only hard rock plant to produce all rare earth elements outside of China.
"Plant design, refurbishment, and operational testing are continuing, and once the test run is completed by Q4 2012 on the entire batch of 48 tonnes of resins, a full chemical analysis of produced oxides and pure metals will be released," Stans Energy said in a statement.
By mid-afternoon the miner was trading up 10% at $0.65 on the Toronto venture board, at its highest for the day, giving it a market cap of $102 million. Like most junior in the rare earth sector the counter is still showing losses for 2012 – it is down 9.7% year to date.
The mining sector was generally weak on Wednesdat with the TSX S&P Global Mining index down 0.8%
