Historical assays of up to 2,563 parts per million rare earth oxides have proven that the high value elements are present within Meeka’s recently acquired Cascade project.

Of the 147 holes where the final metre of each hole was assayed for just three REOs, 65 returned assays of more than 200ppm of the REOs lanthanum, cerium and yttrium.

This is hugely exciting for the Meeka Gold (ASX:MEK) team and for several reasons.

Number one is drilling by other explorers in the province have returned higher rare earth element (REE) enrichment in the saprolite above the zone where its historical assay results originate from.

What this means is that the company has good reason to believe that assays within the saprolite zone within the 2,068sqkm Cascade project with Western Australia’s Albany Fraser Mobile Belt will return significantly better rare earths results.

Secondly, while just three REOs were assayed for, analysis of assay results from other explorers in the region have proven that lanthanum is a good indicator of total REE content.

The results also compare well with those from explorers in this region and other ionic adsorption clay-hosted rare earths explorers in other parts of the world.

Meeka’s average length weighted REO of its samples that returned greater than 300ppm REO is 567ppm.

This compares with grades ranging from 566ppm to 807ppm that Mount Ridley Mines (ASX:MRD) has returned from its projects in the Albany Fraser region as well as the 650ppm that Ionic Rare Earths (ASX:IXR) has seen in the Makuutu project in Uganda.

Not bad given that the three assayed REOs generally make up between 50% and 60% of the total rare earths grade.

Exploration still in its infancy

Chief executive officer Tim Davidson notes that the company is increasingly of the view that it’s in the early stages of identifying a province scale exploration opportunity.

“The results released in this announcement relate to end of hole samples where only three of the 15 rare earth elements were assayed, however the high-grade nature of the results and thickness of the preserved regolith above these samples suggest there is a great potential for large scale IAC-REE style deposits,” he says.

“Reviewing the existing REE assay data from explorers in the province also highlights the fact that lanthanum is a good indicator of total REE enrichment.

“This is an indication of the potential scale of the Cascade REE Project as drilling demonstrates highly elevated levels of lanthanum along the full 100km southern corridor of the project.”

 

 

 

This article was developed in collaboration with Meeka Gold, 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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