Magnum Mining and Exploration Eyes US Rare Earth Market after Promising Test Results in Brazil

Magnum Mining & Exploration (ASX: MGU) has received a significant boost to its ambitions of becoming a supplier to the growing US rare earth elements (REE) market with positive leach test work results from its Palmares project in Brazil.

Preliminary work on 23 REE samples from the Feirinha prospect at Palmares have highlighted the project’s potential to produce high-value magnet feedstock, while the company says its the heavy REE grade of  270 parts per million differentiates Feirinha from its peers.

Magnum sees the simple leach at ambient temperatures and very low residency time as highly encouraging, particularly as it is yet to fully optimise the process.

Highly Anomalous REE

Feirinha hosts a swarm of pegmatite dykes that have returned highly anomalous REE results of as much as 1.69% total rare earth oxides (TREO).

The company is now planning to fast-track a follow-up examination of other known repetitions along strike, and has already initiated discussions with Senai CiMATEC, a leading Brazilian centre of innovative technology active in the area of REE processing and extraction.

Magnum will complete auger drilling across priority REE anomalies as a first pass aerial survey over a larger area than the rock chip and trench sampling that it previously completed on discrete pegmatite dykes.

The ionic clay hosting these dykes will be the company’s main target for the REE mineralisation.

‘Strategic Partner Attention’

“With comparable grades to Brazilian Rare Earths and Meteoric, and a unique advantage in heavy rare earth enrichment, Magnum is well positioned to capture investor and strategic partner attention,” chair Michael Davy said.

“The scale, consistency, and quality of results mark Palmares as a potential for a Tier 1 discovery.”

Magnum revealed plans in late September to investigate the development of a critical minerals processing hub on the company’s 100%-owned tenements located at Lovelock, Nevada.

The proposed Lovelock hub sits within close access to the Hawthorne Military Depot, a key US facility for critical minerals stockpiling.

Earlier in the month the company also published an update on its review of the critical minerals prospectivity of its US assets and identified the Buena Vista magnetite mine in Nevada as having potential to host REEs.