The explorer, which has been drilling the carbonate-hosted deposit in Western Australia’s for the past few years, prior to the discovery of extensive of shallow clay-hosted deposits, released the results for its latest record breaking drilling.
The diamond portion of hole 27 assayed 455.6m at 0.5% total rare earth oxides and 5% phosphate from 209m, with 24 high-grade intersections ranging from 0.4-17m thickness, adding up to a cumulative 100.4m at 1.9% TREO, including 17m at 2.4%.
Assays for the upper 198m of the hole are pending.
The hole passed through the Pendant Dyke, Rare Dyke and was stopped short of the Phos Dyke, ending in 88m of mineralisation assaying at 9% phosphate and 0.4% TREO.
Today’s other hole has been fully assayed at 326.4m at 0.4% TREO and 4% P2O5 from 154m, including a peak 6.2m at 4.2%.
It was drilled through the Pendant Dyke and Rare Dyke and stopped in the footwall at 439m.
RareX managing director Jeremy Robinson said the results continue to “provide overwhelming evidence that Cummins Range is a world-class mineral system, hosting both rare earth oxides and top-quality rock phosphate”.
The work suggests the Rare Dyke is strongly mineralised to 500m down-dip with a circa 450m-wide rare earths and phosphate mineralised alteration halo.
Both holes were drilled down-dip of the 18.8 million tonnes at 1.15% TREO and 10% phosphate resource, and 100m to the south-east of the previous best hole that assayed 384.4m at 0.4% TREO and 4% phosphate.
The drilling data will be incorporated into a resource update to underpin a prefeasibility study due next year.
Its recent scoping study outlined a A$430 million development for an open-pit mine and rare earth refinery at Wyndham producing 7908t of TREO with 1485t of neodymium-praseodymium each year over 12 years, plus around 130,000tpa of phosphate concentrate.
Robinson expects significant growth can be delivered based on RC and diamond drilling completed this year.
It has an exploration target of 23-41Mt grading 1.6-2.4% TREO in addition to current resource.
Yesterday, RareX released the results of metallurgical tests confirming it can produce a premium-grade phosphate concentrate co-product grading more than 39%, suitable for fertiliser markets, using a simple flow sheet.
RareX had cash and investments of $10.3 million at the end of June, having raised $10 million at 9c earlier this year
