Impact Minerals identifies rare earth elements targets at Arkun nickel-copper-PGM project
Impact Minerals managing director Dr Mike Jones says the REE soil results “definitely warrant” follow up work.
A number of high priority targets for rare earth elements (REE) and rubidium have been identified in recent soil geochemistry results at Impact Minerals’ (ASX: IPT) wholly-owned Arkun nickel-copper and platinum group metal project in the emerging mineral province of southwest Western Australia.
The company said the anomalies occurred in significant areas over many hundreds of metres along individual reconnaissance geochemistry traverses.
Each traverse was long enough to extend well away from the target area into areas of “background” in order to establish the relative anomalism of various metals.
From the soil results, Impact said it was evident that the central part of the Arkun project area stands out as being strongly anomalous in REE, with six of the targets identified as warranting follow up work.
The REE comprised heavy and light elements including neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, terbium, ytterbium, cerium and lanthanum.
The region has not been previously explored for REE or rubidium.
Highly-prospective area
Managing director Dr Mike Jones said the soil results were an “exciting outcome”, which supports the company’s belief that the Arkun area is a highly prospective part of the Yilgarn Craton.
“Arkun continues to surprise us with the recognition of numerous target areas for REE and rubidium … although we were not exploring for these commodities, it is a prospective region and sometimes you find what you are not looking for,” he said.
“The extensive areas over which the REE and rubidium occur suggest that more drill targets may emerge with further work.”
Dr Jones said the area remains underexplored.
“Our work shows how poorly explored this emerging mineral province truly is,” he said.
“This area hosts the Greenbushes lithium-tantalum mine (owned by the Talison Lithium joint venture) and the Julimar nickel-copper discovery (Chalice Mining, ASX: CHN) which further proves the potential of this part of the state to host world-class deposits across a variety of commodities.”
Follow-up work
Impact is now preparing to conduct follow-up field checking and sampling with the aim of prioritising areas for more detailed soil geochemistry and ground geophysical surveys extending into surrounding (privately-owned) paddocks.
Land agreements are being pursued but with much of the paddocks currently under crop, accessing the targets will be limited until after the harvesting period.