La Société Française des Métaux Rares treatment plant is a heritage-listed smelting works at Wolfram, Dimbulah, Shire of Mareeba, Queensland, Australia.

[1] Wolfram was discovered in 1894 in the headwaters of the Hodgkinson River scattered over the surface as bunches in quartzose boulders or in drifts interdispersed with coarse gravel.

[1] Demand for high-grade wolfram, after the development of tungsten as a lamp filament in 1904, and for molybdenite for use in patent alloys, led to an early interest in rare minerals by British firms, the most prominent being Liverpool's George G. Blackwell and Sons.

But the rare metals industry was unstable— there was insecurity in the unknown overseas markets where demand fluctuated erratically and local miners were never sure of their returns.

So the Wolfram Co-operative Association was formed to arrange advances and shipments through intermediaries such as the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency and WJ Lempriere and Co, but generally, the local industry was poorly organised.

[1] The workings extended without a break from over 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) along the contact of the intrusive granite with older porphyries and slates from high rugged slopes down to the valley of Bulluburrah Creek (QGMJ 15 Jan 1913: 4).

The wolfram mining industry passed through a depression for several years from 1910, chiefly because of the exhaustion of the residual surface accumulations of ore, thus ending the days of the gouger.

That same year Frenchman, Mr Poulet, took over a number of mine dumps and tailing heaps on behalf of French syndicate.

The objective was to extract wolfram, molybdenite, and bismuth from the lowest grade mixed-metal ore using a specially-designed treatment plant.

[3] The power plant imported by the company included an early 240 horsepower MAN diesel engine, type A4V49, weighing nearly 35,000 kilograms (77,000 lb) that was coupled axially to a DC generator.

An extensive system of overhead wire ropeways to collect ore from mullock heaps and a dam in Bulluburrah Creek were some of the proposed constructions.

The Thermo-Electric Ore Reduction Corporation plant built near the site of the Irvinebank Company Mill at Lower Wolfram sustained the district through the war years with the government paying fixed prices.

[1] The Mount Arthur Molybdenite Company NL worked several mines in the Wolfram Camp area in the 1970s until they sold their equipment by tender in 1989.

[4] The site of the former La Société Française des Métaux Rares treatment plant is across six levels excavated from the side of hill on the eastern bank of Bulluburrah Creek.

Two rows of skip track anchor posts, standing 400 millimetres (16 in) high and set in concrete blocks, run north–south on the east and west edges of Level 3.

[1] The former Société Française des Métaux Rares treatment plant was listed on the Queensland Heritage Register on 4 July 2006 having satisfied the following criteria.

The former La Société Française des Métaux Rares treatment plant is important in demonstrating the pattern of Queensland mining history.

As an abandoned industrial ruin complex in a secluded dry bushland setting, the place evokes a strong aesthetic response.

The remains of the treatment plant, over 6 terraced levels, exhibit a "sense of remoteness" enhanced by the place's isolation, landscape, scale and setting.

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