RareX believes there is big potential to expand the scale of its Cummins Range project in WA after drilling intersected more primary rare earths-niobium mineralisation.

Highlighting just how encouraging it finds the results from the four most recent diamond holes, the company has moved to expand the current drill program through to December 2021.

The four holes are part of RareX’s (ASX:REE) ongoing diamond drilling program that had already proved up the presence of primary mineralisation earlier this month.

They include CDX0011, which intersected a 24m strongly rare earth mineralised fault zone with visible coarse grained monazite downdip of the recent reverse circulation hole CRX0063.

That returned an assay of 41m grading 2.4% total rare earth oxide (TREO) and 0.51% niobium oxide with a higher grade zone of 10m at 4.1% TREO and 0.75% niobium oxide.

CDX0011 is also the westernmost diamond drill hole completed to date and extends the primary Main Fault mineralisation to 120 vertical metres, which is suitable for extraction using an open pit.

Additionally, the presence of significant sulphides in the Main Fault means that geophysical techniques could be useful in targeting additional mineralisation.

The coarse-grained nature of the monazite – a phosphate mineral mined for its rare earths content – present in the sulphide is also expected to open up various processing techniques.

 

Drilling highlights primary rare earths potential

Besides CDX0011, the other three holes in the latest batch of drilling also returned some notable results.

CDX0008 intersected a 20m silicified fault breccia zone from 70m downhole that preliminary XRF analysis indicates is anomalous for rare earths.

This is weathered and likely to correlate with the 77m wide zone seen in CDX0007 about 40m to the northeast.

Hole CDX0009 is the easternmost diamond drill-hole completed to date and was designed to test the fresh rock Main Fault position.

It intersected 10m of silicified sulphidic carbonatite breccia with confirmed rare earths mineralisation about 30m down-hole.

Meanwhile, CDX0010 was drilled to target the area down-dip of the 10m mineralised fault breccia intersected in hole CDX0006.

It drilled through two intervals of fresh rare earth mineralisation, 4.9m of 10% coarse monazite from 115.1m and a 20m mineralised sulphidic fault zone from 139m.

These results support the company’s view that there is considerable potential to expand the Cummins Range deposit, which already hosts a resource of 18.8 million tonnes grading 1.15% TREO and 0.14% niobium oxide.

 

Porphyry system growth

Separately, drilling by partner Kincora Copper (ASX:KCC) at the Trundle Park prospect has intersected multiple broad intervals of porphyry style intrusions.

This has extended the size of the porphyry copper-gold system by about 100m on strike and up to 115m downdip.

Further drilling is now underway to further extend and connect the intrusive systems returned in both TRDD014 and TRDD022.

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.