Doubleview Advances Scandium Recovery as Governments Boost Critical Mineral Support
By Peter Kennedy
Market conditions are aligning in favour of companies that are aiming to produce scandium, a strategically important metal that is essential for high-performance aluminum alloys, solid oxide fuel cells and a range of new and emerging technologies.
They include Sunrise Energy Metals Ltd. [SRL-ASX, SREMF-OTC], a company headed by the legendary mining financier Robert Friedland. Sunrise is planning to develop the world’s only primary scandium mine in Parkes, 350 kilometres west of Sydney, Australia. Production is scheduled to start in 2028.
In an interview, Friedland said the importance and utility of scandium was recently highlighted by an agreement that grants U.S. defence contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. [LMT-NYSE] an option to purchase up to 15 tonnes of scandium oxide produced from Sunrise’s Syerston Scandium project.
In Canada, scandium’s importance recently was underlined when the Canadian government officially designated certain critical minerals as a national security priority under the Defence Production Act. This would allow the federal government to support the mining industry by guaranteeing it a buyer and a minimum price.
Canada’s Energy Minister Tim Hodgson announced that G7 countries were investing $6.4 billion into 26 critical mineral projects across Canada to support the domestic mining industry and provide alternatives to China’s overwhelming dominance of the critical minerals production sector.
Projects that are expected to get funding include Rio Tinto Plc’s [RIO-NYSE] Scandium production plant in Sorel-Tracy, Quebec. In early November 2025, Rio Tinto and Canada Growth Fund (CGF) announced a transaction to advance the Canadian production of scandium oxide at a facility under construction at Sorel-Tracey. CGF – a $15 billion independent investment fund operating at arm’s length from the Government of Canada – will invest approximately $25 million to expand the facility’s nameplate capacity to nine tonnes per annum.
Scandium, one of 17 metallic (one of two non-lanthanides in the rare earth basket) elements called rare earths, is used as an alloy to strengthen aluminum for automotive and aerospace components and is a critical component for chips used in smartphones to enable radio-frequency selection. It is also used in hydrogen fuel cell technology, as the metal improves electrical conductivity.
Even though scandium is found all over the world, it is usually in very small amounts and mixed up with other minerals and metals. As a result, scandium has historically been sourced from the tailings of other mined metals such as nickel, titanium and uranium. In the new Australian projects, however, the metal would be extracted directly from conventional open pit mines.
The global market amounts to about 60 tonnes per annum of scandium oxide, which equates to about 40 tonnes per year of scandium units. “That is a tiny market by metal standards, an amount that could be fitted in the corner of a standard office,’’ said Sunrise Energy CEO Sam Riggall. Roughly 85% of that material is produced by China. Japan accounts for 5.0 to 10%, with the balance coming from Russia and Kazakhstan.
Riggall and Friedland are both convinced that the scandium market is set for significant growth in part because the escalating U.S./China tech-arms race is driving Western nations to develop regional supply chains for scandium.
It’s worth noting that Sunrise used a price forecast of US$1,500 per kilogram Sc203 for ore reserve estimate calculations.
Meanwhile in Canada, Doubleview Gold Corp. [DBG-TSXV, DBLVF-OTCQB, A1W038-FSE] has gained attention by recently achieving a major breakthrough in its bid to recover scandium from copper porphyry tailings.
The company said results from a 2-year metallurgical test program confirm the viability of recovering high purity scandium alongside copper, gold, cobalt and other metals from the company’s 100%-owned HAT polymetallic deposit in British Columbia.
The company said this breakthrough development marks a global first, namely the successful recovery of scandium from copper flotation tailings to a scandium oxide product.
The primary objective of this extensive test program, conducted at SGS Canada Inc., was to establish a viable proprietary flowsheet enabling scandium to be included in the upcoming, updated mineral resource estimate and preliminary economic assessment for the HAT project.
In July 2024, the company announced a maiden open pit resource estimate (MRE). It was highlighted by an indicated resource of 150 million tonnes of containing 1.35 billion pounds of copper equivalent (CuEq) at 0.408% CuEq, including 733 million pounds of copper, 28 million pounds of cobalt, 929,000 ounces of gold and 2.0 million ounces of silver.
On top of that is an inferred resource of 477 million tonnes containing 3.62 billion pounds of CuEq at 0.344% CuEq, including 1.94 billion pounds of copper, 91 million pounds of cobalt, 2.3 million ounces of gold and 7.57 million ounces of silver.
According to the MRE, The Scandium potential for the Hat Deposit is estimated to be 300 to 500 million tonnes at an average grade of 40 ppm (0.004%) Sc203, material that is confined solely to the resource blocks that meet a cut-off grade of 0.2% CuEq within the open pit shell that defines the extent of the mineral resource estimate.
After demonstrating that scandium could be extracted from copper flotation tailings, the company said subsequent test work at SGS Canada, has also demonstrated that scandium in flotation tailings can be recovered to a high-purity di-scandium tri-oxide product.
Doubleview President and CEO Farshad Shirvani described the results as a “game changer for the HAT project and potentially for the entire scandium industry on the world stage.’’
“Our metallurgy program shows that at HAT, we can recover high-value scandium directly from the tailings of a standard copper flotation circuit, using acid produced from internally generated pyrite,’’ Shirvani said. “If the HAT project advances to production, scandium could become a high-margin bonus on top of a potential world-class copper-gold-cobalt operation,’’ he said.
Now that the company has established the technical viability of scandium recovery, the next steps will focus on pushing extraction and overall recovery as high as possible through continued optimization and pilot-scale testing.
In an interview with Resource World, Shirvani said the company has roughly $8.5 million in the treasury and plans to install a pilot plant near the project site for metallurgy optimization purposes. He said the company may look for support either from a major partner or grom the Federal Government.
“I feel very excited about our prospects,’’ Shirvani said. “The timing couldn’t be better.’’
On January 5, 2026, Doubleview shares were trading at $1.04 in a 52-week range of $1.33 and 29 cents.