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RareX has more than it could have hoped for at Byro East
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Special Report: RareX went looking for valuable rare earths near Chalice’s big Julimar find in WA and stumbled across nickel, copper and platinum group elements (PGE).
Before Chalice Gold Mines (ASX:CHN) made its company-making Julimar nickel discovery in Western Australia, Rarex (ASX:REE) had picked itself up some rare earths prospective ground not too far away.
While RareX initially pegged the Byro East project in January this year to hunt for rare earths, the company has now also uncovered “numerous” nickel-copper-PGE targets.
The news certainly piqued investor interest, with shares advancing 7 per cent to an intraday high of 7.6c on Monday morning.
RareX (ASX:REE) share price chart:
Further review of publicly available data by the company shows the tenure contains extensions of the enigmatic Milly Milly intrusion and multiple other ultramafic intrusions contained within the Byro East ultramafic corridor and the Brockman ultramafic
corridor.
The geological setting of the Milly Milly intrusions is considered analogous to the Gonneville intrusion that hosts the Chalice discovery.
RareX says there is at least one nickel-copper-PGE gossan present that requires follow-up, because most of the past exploration has been conducted on the Milly Milly intrusion due to its size and affinities to the very large Jinchuan deposit in China.
Jinchuan, China’s largest nickel mine, was discovered in the 50s and hosts a resource of 500 million tonnes at 1.2 per cent nickel, 0.7 per cent copper and 0.4 grams per tonne (g/t) PGE.
Because of the extensive focus on Milly Milly, much of the Eastern and Brockman corridor has been overlooked, RareX says.
Julimar find ignites exploration rush
Chalice revealed its high-grade nickel-copper-palladium discovery at the greenfields Julimar project in March this year.
This prompted a mad dash by explorers to pick up ground in the region.
RareX says similarities have been drawn between the quartzites in the Narryer Terrane, which hosts the company’s Byro East project, and the quartzites in the York-Toodyay area near Perth, where the Julimar discovery has been made.
“Geochronology investigations have found similar aged rocks and the concept of the ‘Western Gneiss Terrain’ along the western edge of the Yilgarn Craton has led to renewed interest in the nickel-copper-PGE exploration potential of this terrain,” the company noted.
Byro East Project competitor map. Pic: Supplied
RareX has now begun collating all previous exploration data and reprocessing historical geophysical data ahead of the ground being granted in the coming months.
Ground-based exploration is expected to follow on from Cummins Range and Weld North later this year.
This article was developed in collaboration with RareX, 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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