Osmond Resources’ main asset is the Orión EU Critical Minerals Project in Jaén Province, Andalucía, southern Spain. It holds an effective 76% of a hard-rock (lithified) heavy mineral deposit in the Ordovician Pochico Formation. The minerals that matter are rutile and ilmenite (titanium), zircon (zirconium and hafnium) and monazite (rare earths). They also own Iberian One in Segovia province, which he called a “rounding error” they aren’t focused on. In this interview, I got an introduction to the story and I asked him why the uranium explorers of the 1960s and DuPont in the 1980s walked away, and why nobody picked up a known heavy mineral system for almost 40 years. I also asked whether an underground mine inside Natura 2000 land can realistically get permitted in Spain, how thin the resource really is, and how they plan to pay for drilling now and a roughly US$300M build later.
TL;DR
When I asked what the catch was, the CEO said it’s a Spanish permitting discount and that no big fund has bought in yet. The maiden resource is 60 Mt, but three quarters of it is inferred and it rests on five drill holes plus 37 channel samples. So current drilling is about building confidence, with an updated resource and scoping study targeted for end of Q1 2027. The CEO told me he owns about 9% fully diluted and his long-term incentive is out-of-the-money options. He spends 90% of his time on Osmond and 10% as non-exec chair of Megado Minerals, which shares Osmond’s chief geologist. The bigger plan is a Madrid secondary listing and eventually a Spanish CEO. He named permitting as the main risk himself.
What have they done for shareholders lately?
The maiden resource came out September 30. It’s 60 Mt at 9.4% TiO2, 3% ZrO2, 624 ppm HfO2 and 6,274 ppm TREO, including about 1,800 ppm magnet rare earth oxides. Of that, 15.3 Mt is measured and indicated and 44.7 Mt is inferred. Two days later they released a scoping study for a 2 Mtpa underground room-and-pillar mine processing 15.8 Mt over nine years, on a 100% basis. It shows about US$300M initial capex, a US$2.3B post-tax NPV8, a 145% IRR and a six-month payback. He told me ASX rules limited how much inferred they could use, and that under Canadian or US rules the first study would have mined about 40 Mt instead of 16 Mt. They also won the maximum €250,000 grant under Spain’s critical minerals plan, out of only €1.7M handed out. He said the head of the mines department in Madrid held them up as an example project at a conference in Sevilla. Two rigs have been drilling since mid-October.
How much money do they have and what are they spending it on?
I didn’t get a cash number. The stock went into a trading halt on October 30 for a material capital raise, and he couldn’t discuss it beyond saying his own investment will be over $1M afterwards. The last raise was in January. There are 225M shares out at A$0.52, no warrants and 70M options, so about 295M fully diluted. The money goes to drilling at about €200/m all-in, with no camp needed because there are roads, power and water. It also covers metallurgy, the resource and study updates, and G&A of about A$1.2M a year. He put marketing at a couple hundred thousand euros, focused on Spain and Europe. For the roughly US$300M build, he pointed to offtake prepayments from three EU downstream groups (two in France, plus Neo Performance Materials in Estonia), project finance backed by the European Investment Bank, EU funding tools starting in 2028, and Spanish industrial groups.
Upcoming catalysts
The first things to watch are the financing announcement and drill results. The program has grown from 13 holes to as many as 20, including infill holes and holes branched off existing ones. All of it targets confidence rather than step-outs. He hopes to have an interim updated resource by end of Q1 2027, followed by a revised scoping study. A second version of the processing flowsheet is expected in about six months, with 5 tonnes of material going to a lab in Perth. The Madrid secondary listing is targeted for 1H 2027, subject to regulator approval, and making Madrid the primary listing is 12 to 18 months out. The mining permit application is planned for 2H 2027. If Orión is named a Strategic Project under the EU Critical Raw Materials Act, he expects the permit to take about 27 months. He’s undecided on whether to do a PFS or go straight to DFS work. He also mentioned China’s January 10 decision on rare earth exports as an outside factor.
Risks
Permitting and social licence are the main risks we talked about. The deposit sits inside Red Natura 2000 protected land. The plant would be outside it, reaching the deposit by a decline, and the 86-page environmental declaration drew no comments at public consultation. I asked about two nearby projects that were rejected (an open-pit gypsum operation in Almería and the Matamulas monazite project in Castilla-La Mancha) but the CEO said both were open pit, and Matamulas is in a different region. One of three private landowners, who uses the land for hunting, is challenging the forced-access process in court against the Junta de Andalucía. The other two have signed agreements, drilling hasn’t stopped, and he framed the dispute as being about how much they’ll pay. The resource rests on just 42 grade inputs, and the variogram shows about 100 to 120 m of continuity while indicated tonnes extend to 750 m and inferred to 1.5 km. He relied on the independent consultants and the uniform seabed geology, and said the seam will “pinch and swell” however many holes they drill. Mineral percentages are calculated from whole-rock chemistry, not measured directly. Thorium sits in the monazite and zircon, which brings in Spain’s nuclear regulator at the processing stage. Water won’t be locked in until after the mine application. The vendor group, Anthony included, still holds a 20% carried interest in the project, which is a potential conflict if the company ever buys it out. There’s also an election coming in Spain, and he noted the committee assessing strategic status could be affected.
Osmond Resources CEO Interview
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