Impact has identified numerous high priority rare earth element and rubidium targets at its Arkun project just 150km east of Perth, Western Australia.

Soil geochemistry data found that the soil anomalies occur over many hundreds of metres along individual reconnaissance traverses.

The REE comprises both heavy and light rare earth elements including neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, terbium, ytterbium, cerium and lanthanum.

This is significant for Impact Minerals (ASX:IPT) as no previous REE or rubidium exploration has been carried out in the region, where recent work had identified significant targets for nickel-copper-platinum group element mineralisation and lithium-caesium-tantalum.

“The Arkun Project continues to surprise us with the recognition of numerous target areas for rare earth elements and rubidium,” managing director Dr Mike Jones said.

“Although we were not exploring for these commodities, one of Impact’s key target generation philosophies is to acquire large strategic ground holdings in prospective regions and so it is not surprising that sometimes you might just find what you weren’t looking for.”

He added that follow-up work is warranted and would be carried out as part of work on the recently identified targets for nickel-copper-PGMs and LCT pegmatites in the same area.

Field checking and rock chip sampling is already in process.

“The extensive areas over which the REE and rubidium occur suggest that drill targets may emerge with further work,” Jones noted.

An emerging mineral province

Jones also said the company’s exploration work had clearly demonstrated how poorly explored this emerging mineral province of southwestern Western Australia truly is, as demonstrated by the recent Julimar nickel-copper-PGM discovery.

“It should also be remembered that the province also hosts the Greenbushes lithium-tantalum mine which further attests to the potential of this part of Western Australia to host world class deposits across a wide variety of commodity metals,” he added.

Impact’s soil geochemistry work highlighted the central part of the Arkun project as being strongly anomalous in REE with six high priority targets identified as warranting follow up work.

It also highlighted four areas as being strongly anomalous for rubidium and flagged for follow-up.

Follow-up field checking and sampling will continue with the aim of prioritising areas for more detailed soil geochemistry and ground geophysical surveys that will extend away from the roads and into the surrounding paddocks.

Detailed follow-up will require land access agreements and will be limited until after the harvest period later this year.

 

 

 

This article was developed in collaboration with Impact Minerals, 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.

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