Resource Base granted three new tenements at Mitre Hill clay-hosted rare earths project

Resource Base (ASX: RBX) has been granted three new tenements covering a combined total of 623 square kilometres at its Mitre Hill clay-hosted rare earth elements (REE) project in the Murray Basin, which spans South Australia and Victoria.

One of the tenements borders an existing block where the company recently discovered a higher-grade zone of clay-hosted REE mineralisation, which is open along the shared boundary. The zone included grades up to 1,421 parts per million total rare earth oxides (TREO) from 3m below surface.

The second tenement borders land held by a third party, which reported intercepts of the same style REE grading more than 500ppm TREO.

The third tenement that was granted also borders land with reported intercepts exceeding 500ppm TREO, as well as Australian Rare Earths’ (ASX: AR3) Red Tail and Yellow Tail deposits, which host a combined inferred resource of 39.9 million tonnes at 725ppm TREO.

Emerging precinct

Resource Base now has five granted tenements with 12 applications outstanding on the Mitre Hill project, which forms a 2,600sq km landholding in what the company describes as an emerging and globally significant clay-hosted REE precinct.

“We are excited to have been granted these three tenements that formed part of the original Mitre Hill REE transaction,” Resource Base chairman and chief executive officer Shannon Green said.

“They significantly increase the highly prospective clay hosted REE ground available to us, and all three tenements are adjacent to land where high grade intercepts have been achieved.”

Roadside drilling program

Resource Base is preparing to roll-out an initial broad-scale roadside drilling campaign on the new tenements following completion of step-out drilling on existing acreage currently underway.

Priority for the roadside work will be given to the area which abuts the higher-grade, clay-hosted REE zone located to the north-western corner of the existing acreage.

Resource Base anticipates drilling in this area will assist in underpinning an initial REE resource.

The grades discovered in the priority area are reported to be comparable to those at the nearby Red Tail and Yellow Tail deposits.

“These new tenements demonstrate our strategy to build a large-scale project in a region highly prospective for clay-hosted REE,” Mr Green said.

“A number of the tenements are contiguous, providing the opportunity for us to establish significant scale at Mitre Hill,” he added.