MTM eyes ‘district scale’ REE and nickel targets at East Laverton project

East Laverton Project soil survey defines extensive new rare earth and nickel targets
Project is surrounded by major gold and REE players in WA
MTM confident of ‘district-scale’ REE potential at Point Kidman prospect
Drilling planned at the new nickel and REE anomalies

MTM Critical Metals has identified several new broad rare earth elements (REE) and nickel anomalies at its East Laverton project in WA.

The ~2,000km2 East Laverton project is prospective for REE, gold and base metals but remains underexplored due to a layer of transported cover which masked any potential discoveries from previous explorers.

The potential for discovery is high. East Laverton is surrounded by major projects like AngloGold Ashanti’s Sunrise Dam and Tropicana gold mines, and Lynas’ (ASX:LYC) super high-grade 54.2Mt at 5.2% Mt Weld REE mine.

MTM Critical Metals’ (ASX:MTM) main focus at the project is the emerging district-scale REE opportunity at Point Kidman in the north of the project area and both gold and base metals anomalies in the Seahorse prospect area.

And the focus is paying off, with an extensive soil survey now identifying several new broad REE anomalies at Point Kidman, along with further nickel anomalies at Seahorse.

District-scale REE potential at Point Kidman

The survey uncovered broad REE anomalies which expand zones of potential clay-hosted mineralisation to more than 200km2 at Point Kidman. Most of the targets are untested by drilling.

MTM MD Lachlan Reynolds said prospectivity for mineralisation had been identified over several very large areas.

“Point Kidman is proving to have district-scale, clay-hosted REE mineralisation potential with numerous kilometre-scale, coherent REE anomalies defined over a prospect area covering a total area in excess of 200km2,” Reynolds said.

“Previous aircore drilling of anomalous areas have indicated the presence of significant thicknesses and grades of clay-hosted REE which are interpreted to be related to fertile basement granite and granite-gneiss rocks that have a preserved weathering profile.”

MTM Critical Metals ASX MTM — Pic: East Laverton project location diagram showing prospect areas. Source: MTM.

Extended nickel laterite targets at Seahorse

Promising nickel results were also returned at the Seahorse prospect, extending nickel laterite targets over a further 2km x 2km area.

The company says this indicates there are likely to be further ultramafic units within the bedrock gneisses which may have also developed laterite nickel mineralisation, similar to the area drilled several kilometres to the east.

“The sampling results at Seahorse show that there are coherent anomalies which are prospective for nickel mineralisation located several kilometres to the west of where the company has previously drilled lateritic nickel mineralisation,” Reynolds said.

Upcoming drilling, assays from Pomme pending

Reynolds said the plan is now to drill these new REE and nickel anomalies at East Laverton.

In the meantime, exploration is under way at the company’s Pomme REE project in Québec, Canada, where recent diamond drilling hit total rare earth oxides (TREO) mineralisation up to 2.72% and 32% neodymium and praseodymium (NdPr) in TREO.

MTM says Pomme increasingly has the potential to contain an “economic resource of some scale”, for magnetic rare earths and niobium which are highly sought-after for use in batteries and advanced technologies.

Further assays from Pomme are pending.

This article was developed in collaboration with MTM Critical Metals, 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.