American Rare Earths is on the fast track to developing its large-scale projects, with drilling now underway to define a significant JORC Resource at Halleck Creek.

The revving up of the drill rigs has started just a month after American Rare Earths (ASX:ARR) boosted the 100% owned project’s exploration target by 328%.

With the project now boasting a globally significant target of 1.01 to 1.27 billion tonnes of rare earth mineralised rocks, the Australian company is drilling 36 holes for a total length of 5,400m.

To put that exploration target into context, very few rare earths resource estimates worldwide exceed one billion tonnes of rare earth metal oxide content.

American Rare Earths has also had drill permits approved to expand the drill campaign to up to 55 holes at the project.

Green shoots

Included in the resource estimate is 692,000 to 865,000 tonnes of the high value Magnetic Rare Earth Oxides (MREO), including neodymium (Nd) and praseodymium (Pr) oxides. Nd and Pr are key elements of the permanent magnets in batteries that power clean energy essentials such as electric vehicles and offshore wind turbines required for US energy and national security.

The latest drill campaign closely follows the highly promising results from the maiden drill program at Halleck Creek and ARR’s A$14.0m placement from global institutional, professional and sophisticated investors.

The company expects the drilling to be completed at the project in the very friendly mining state of Wyoming by mid-December this year.

Managing Director and CEO Chris Gibbs commented: “We’re very excited to commence this drilling program to advance the massive Halleck Creek Project.

“The success of the maiden drill campaign saw us announce on September 1, 2022, the boosting of the exploration target by 328% to a globally significant 1.01-1.27 billion tonnes of rare earth mineralised rocks.

“After completing a A$14 million placement, announced on 17 August 2022, we are well capitalised to unlock the project’s potential and drive it forward into 2023 and beyond.”

And there’s La Paz

The next phase of drilling at Halleck Creek also comes hot on the heels of highly positive results from critical metallurgy test work on ore from ARR’s 100% owned La Paz, which demonstrate clear opportunities for cost savings.

La Paz in Arizona has potential, like Halleck Creek, to be one of North America’s largest rare earths deposits, where the focus is also on the high-value magnet rare earths. La Paz additionally has significant levels of “super-alloy” element Scandium.

Drilling results released in June boosted confidence that there’s significant resource expansion potential at La Paz, where ARR has been targeting 742 – 928 million tonnes (MT) to add to the 170MT resource

Again like Halleck Creek, La Paz has extremely low levels of penalty radioactive elements thorium and uranium.

This also lowers processing costs as well as making the Sydney based company a sought-after partner for a number of US Government supported R&D projects and blue ribbon organisations developing a sustainable and secure US supply chain.

 

 

 

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.

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