American Rare Earths discovers exciting new high grade deposit

American Rare Earths has identified a new significant rare earth deposit in an area with very similar geological characteristics to the company’s huge Halleck Creek project.

The company has staked 37 claims covering 303 hectares and has applications lodged for another 259 hectares.

Historic reports indicate the rare earth mineralisation outcrop may extend over 457 metres, and the deposit is currently open at depth and along strike.

The Portable X-Ray Fluorescence (pXRF) field samples show very encouraging results of up to 91,438 ppm for five rare earth elements, which include the highly valuable neodymium, praseodymium and yttrium.

American Rare Earths (ASX:ARR) is now looking forward to doing more exploration at the claims north of the flagship Halleck Creek project.

Building scale

The new areas also offer potential synergies with Halleck Creek, which already has a JORC resource of 1.43 billion tonnes with only 25% of the are explored.

This makes the Wyoming project potentially one of the largest rare earths deposits in North America. And in the strategic rare earths game, which is more complex than that of individual metals, grade might not always be king, but scale is definitely queen.

Halleck Creek also has bonus negligible penalty elements, radioactive uranium and thorium, which are commonly found at other rare earths deposits.

At the new claims ARR geologists observed that the rare earth elements are concentrated in veins enriched with allanite, a group of minerals that is a valuable source of rare earths. The pXRF analyses of large, 2 to 4 centimetre allanite crystals demonstrated grades of 7.4% to 23.2% rare earths lanthanum, cerium neodymium, praseodymium and yttrium (La + Ce + Nd + Pr + Y).

Powdered grab samples from an exposed allanite-enriched vein were analysed and showed grades of 1.7% to 9.1% La + Ce + Nd + Pr + Y.

CEO and Managing Director, Mr Chris Gibbs, commented:

“These are outstanding results from the initial field work and the exploration team we have on the ground in the United States.

“Given the proximity of these new claims to Halleck Creek, we’re very excited about the future synergies and opportunities between both projects and we look forward to conducting further exploration activities to unlock the potential of this new high-grade discovery.”

More than high grades

ARR will also be hoping the new claims offer up ore with the same metallurgical benefits as Halleck Creek and its La Paz project in Arizona. While assay grades can get headlines, metallurgical test results are pivotal to a deposit’s viability and its environmental impacts.

So far the test work done has been laying a smooth path ahead for the project’s commercial development, alongside a robust ESG profile.

It’s also led to ARR ore being chosen by a number of leading US research organisations racing towards developing a North American critical minerals supply chain.

These include the Department of Defense funded DARPA EMBER project, a Department of Energy Advanced Manufacturing Office funded project and a DOE Critical Materials Institute funded project, reflecting the US Government’s support of the American rare earths industry.

This article was developed in collaboration with American Rare Earths a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.