RareX to drill Weld North rare earths project near Lynas Corporation’s Mt Weld operation
RareX’s Weld North project is close to the Mt Weld rare earth mine and hosts a similar anomaly.
RareX (ASX: REE) is gearing up to begin drilling its Weld North rare earths project, which is close to Lynas Corporation’s (ASX: LYC) new rare earths mine in Western Australia.
A drilling contractor has now been engaged, with the program scheduled to begin next month.
Weld North is about 350km from Kalgoorlie and only 84km north of Lynas’ Mt Weld mine. Lynas has also decided on a Kalgoorlie location for its proposed $500 million cracking and leaching plant for processing its Mt Weld material.
According to RareX, Weld North hosts a large, circular magnetic anomaly prospective for carbonate host mineralisation similar to that found in the majority of the world’s existing rare earth mines, including Mt Weld.
Mt Weld’s anomaly has a diameter of 4km and a current resource of 54.5 million tonnes at 5.4% total rare earth element oxide (TREO) for 2.8Mt of contained REO.
In comparison, RareX noted the Weld North anomaly has a 5km diameter and has a similar pattern to Mt Weld.
“The circular shape and size comparison to Mt Weld indicates that the Weld North magnetic anomaly is highly prospective for a significant rare earths discovery,” the company added.
RareX plans to carry out aircore drilling to test under the cover sequence to evaluate whether the magnetic anomaly source is caused by a similar carbonatite intrusion to Mt Weld.
Cummins Range
Today’s news follows RareX’s positive results from its flagship Cummins Range rare earths project in WA’s Kimberley region.
Initial assays from infill drilling were “significantly above the resource grade” and included “spectacular” widths.
Notable results were 41m at 4% TREO from 29m and 36m at 4.6% TREO from surface, including an ultra-high-grade zone of 3m at 25.1% TREO.
Drilling at the project has been designed to upgrade the current resource to indicated status, with the inferred resource totalling 13Mt at 1.13% TREO.
These assays are part of a 6,143m drilling campaign which was completed recently.
More results are anticipated over the coming weeks.