It has been barely a week since Voltaic relisted on the ASX and it has already proved the presence of rare earth elements within its Gascoyne project.

A review of historical data has returned multiple anomalous total rare earth oxide (TREO) results within several drillholes, including GAD0004 with seven discrete intervals totalling 82.3m of REE-rich zones, with an average intercept of 1,053 parts per million TREO – and a peak of 2,539ppm TREO.

To top it off, most of the intercepts have encouraging widths of up to 27m (not true width) and are near-surface, meaning that any future mining by Voltaic Strategic Resources (ASX:VSR) will not have to go far to access the good stuff.

Furthermore, there is a very high ratio (23%) of valuable magnet REEs to the total REE content, which is analogous to REEs found by Kingfisher Mining and Dreadnought Resources at their respective, neighbouring projects.

And at the risk of sounding like a broken record, the company has also established that REE mineralisation is widespread with historical surface rock chips returning results of up to 12% TREO (not all REEs assayed for), which extends the width of the interpreted mineralised corridor.

“The historical drill results are extremely encouraging for the REE prospectivity of the region, particularly when one considers that the historical explorers were solely focused on uranium,” chief executive officer Michael Walshe said.

“We have observed elevated REE values over several significant widths, with high tenor mineralisation consistent through both shallow oxide cover and primary basement.

“Moreover, the mineralisation appears to have a high proportion of the in-demand ‘magnet’ REEs, namely neodymium, praseodymium, terbium and dysprosium, which is encouraging for potential economic extraction in the future”.

Voltaic will now focus on delineating the extents of this highly prospective corridor by targeting outcropping ferrocarbonatites (ironstones), carbonatite intrusions under cover, and potential oxide supergene mineralisation above interpreted regional structures.

Other work will also be carried out to determine the potential scale and implications of this opportunity.

Chance discovery

The historical core was fortuitously found during a field reconnaissance program at the ‘Arthur River Outcamp’.

This core allowed the company to quickly validate other historical data and accelerate its geological understanding of the Gascoyne project area.

It also confirms both oxide and primary REE mineralisation, which warrants follow-up exploration to delineate and extend the mineralised system.

 

 

 

This article was developed in collaboration with Voltaic Strategic Resources, 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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