A solvent extraction process based on organophosphorus extractant EHEHPA has been developed to raise the purity of erbium from 20 to >85% in the product solution. The challenging task of upgrading erbium value in a host of chemically similar heavy rare earths present in a concentrate (% composition: Dy2O3: 58.72, Er2O3: 21.45, Ho2O3: 13.33, Tm2O3: 0.67, Yb2O3: 4.74 and Y2O3: 1.09) was accomplished by careful selection of process parameters such as aqueous feed acidity, EHEHPA concentration, total rare earths concentration in feed solution, phase ratio, scrubbing agent, and so forth. Under optimised conditions, a multi-stage counter-current and scrubbing test runs raised the purity of erbium to >85% with >95% recovery in the product strip solution. Amongst the various scrubbing agent, 0.025M Er2O3 at 1.2M HCl was found to be superior.