Sustainability & Stakeholders
Cobra Resources’ initial Sustainability Plan highlights the action we have taken to date and introduces the company’s approach and vision for ESG through its exploration activities. It also includes the key next steps we will take to implement and report on good ESG practice if, as aspired, our operations expand and progress from exploration to mine development phase.
We also pride ourselves on developing long standing relationships with our stakeholders. Through stakeholder engagement, community consultation and maintaining a transparent operating ethos, we aspire to discover and define valuable mineral resources that can economically benefit local stakeholders and communities.
Download our Sustainability Plan and other stakeholder information here:
Low Impact ISR Mining
Integration Mining & Farming
Green Energy – Infrastructure & Hydrogen
Community & Stakeholders
Low Disturbance ISR Mining
Sourcing for Decarbonisation
Cobra faces a broad range of climate-related risks. These include the requirement for sustainable sourcing of rare earths, and the company has devised an exploration strategy to pursue both cost efficient and environmentally sustainable approaches in identifying economically competitive sources of REEs. This has materialised in the company defining a REE resource that occurs within gold overburden and making an ionic REE discovery that has unprecedented environmental advantages that relate to its amenability to ISR mining.
The Boland and Wudinna projects are still in the very early stages of exploration and resource development, however the following work programmes have been initiated to inform the company’s ability to manage climate related risks and opportunities that may impact future operations and the environment which will help propel a sustainable model during 2024 and beyond:
- the company has installed five monitoring bores to obtain baseline environmental and hydrology data to assess the risks associated with ISR with the aim of developing a pilot study to test REE extraction and remediation
- at the completion of a pilot study at the Boland Project, the company is committed to evaluate the emissions associated with ISR production and to benchmark those emissions
- the company’s sustainability plan is periodically reviewed to evaluate future climate change related risks and opportunities and how they may influence our goals over the short, medium, and long-term
Climate-related opportunities have driven Cobra’s business strategy to define environmentally considerate sources of REEs.
Cobra aspires to contribute to the green energy transition with the responsible production of rare earths, particularly magnet rare earths (Nd, Pr, Dy & Tb), to be sourced through low-impact ISR mining.
Magnet REEs are pivotable in the production of the permanent magnets used in energy efficient turbines and engines. The financial impacts of climate risks and opportunities facing the business will likely change as the project progresses. They shall be evaluated and reported as the project advances and inform Cobra’s ongoing business strategy and financial planning in relation to climate related risks and opportunities.
As the Boland Project progresses scoping studies, Cobra is committed to integrating environmental considerations into project scoping and economic analysis. This includes environmental protection, commercial use of renewable energy sources, energy efficiency, sustainable resource extraction and remediation.
Cobra’s ambition to produce rare earth oxides through ISR or from gold overburden provides reliance and ethics to our mineral resources business strategy as in both circumstances, energy intensive steps are greatly reduced through ISR mining and recovering value from overburden. Cobra is also exploring opportunities to produce acid from groundwater and to deacidify lixiviants through filtration rather than relying on natural attenuation for remediation.
As the business grows, Cobra will consider the use of climate change scenario analysis to evaluate the resilience of the company’s strategy to climate change risks and opportunities. Cobra shall aim to define a baseline carbon footprint to assist in managing the performance of meeting emission reduction targets.
