Resources Top 5: Australian Rare Earths makes game-changing move towards commercialisation

American Rare Earths makes giant stride towards commercialisation at Halleck
Triton Minerals up on yesterday’s news of recommitment to Ancuabe Project
Barton Gold, Greenstone Resources, and Dalaroo Metals up on no news

Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Thursday, December 1.

AMERICAN RARE EARTHS (ASX:ARR)

ARR has made a huge leap towards the commercialisation of its Halleck rare earths project in the Wyoming, US, with mineralogy tests showing rare earth host mineral at Halleck Creek can be easily liberated.

The host mineral, allanite, contains about 90% of total rare earths present.

“Simplicity of Allanite liberation allows for higher recovery and ability to upgrade rare earths elements at lower costs,” ARR says.

This increases ARR’s confidence that metallurgical process for production can be developed, which is a game-changer for the company and demonstrates Halleck’s potential to become a key strategic project within the USA, helping to onshore supply of these critical rare earths.

“The Halleck Creek Project is shaping up to being a world class tier one asset,” MD Chris Gibbs says.

“The sheer size, scale and nature of the deposit lends itself to a low-cost open cut mining operation, and not too complex metallurgy.

“The results provide further confidence in the potential for Halleck Creek to be a key strategic project within the USA, helping to onshore supply of these critical rare earths.”

Test work on the comminution circuit and magnetic separation is currently underway at Nagrom Laboratories in Perth, Western Australia.

TRITON MINERALS (ASX:TON)

(Up on no news)

With the support of its proposed cornerstone shareholder Shandong Yulong, Triton announced on Thursday its re-commitment to the large-scale development of the Ancuabe Graphite Project in northeastern Mozambique.

This decision, the company says, has been driven by the increasing demand for graphite from both battery and industrial applications and the potentially exceptional returns that the Ancuabe Project is expected to generate.

The 2017 DFS, which is based upon mining and processing 1Mt of ore and the production of 60,000tpa of high quality and high margin graphite concentrate, established the Ancuabe project as a globally significant graphite development, boasting strong returns (US$298m, IRR 37%) over a long mine life (27 years), with short payback period (3.8 years).

Triton is currently completing a revised project plan, including an update of the 2017 DFS with results expected in coming months.

“Yulong is very eager to assist the company get into production as soon as possible,” TON chairman Rod Zhang says.

BARTON GOLD (ASX:BGD)

(Up on no news)

Towards the end of November BGD expanded its reverse circulation drilling program at the Tunkillia Gold Project in South Australia’s Gawler Craton to include up to ~2,000m diamond drilling (DD).

This drilling will target the depth extensions of the 223 Deposit and the new ~500m long Area 51 gold zone recently announced in September.

The information gathered in this drilling will inform an updated mineral resource estimate (MRE), where the project’s total mineralised footprint has grown significantly via the discovery of three new gold zones (223 North, Area 191 and Area 51) since November 2021.

GREENSTONE RESOURCES (ASX:GSR)

(Up on no news)

Shares in the junior leapt on Thursday morning after it announced a hit of 7m at 57.84g/t from just 90m at the Burbanks gold mine near Coolgardie, including 1m at 375g/t.

As Stockhead’s Josh Chiat writes: “7m at almost two ounces to the tonne is the sort of thing you don’t normally see in this day and age, so investors will stand up and take notice even at this late stage of the game.”

Other hits include 3m at 4.18g/t from 17m and 2m at 5.88g/t from 38m, in a 10,000m drill program supporting the examination of GSR’s 215,000-330,000oz Burbanks exploration target. That is outside of an existing resource of 3.4Mt at 2.5g/t gold for 277,547oz.

MD Chris Hanson says the strike will place Burbanks in the top 10 drill intercepts for pre-development projects in WA this year.

DALAROO METALS (ASX:DAL)

(Up on no news)

DAL is still riding high waves after revealing the identification of “robust” rare earth and lithium anomalies at the Marloo River prospect within the wider Lyons River Project in the underexplored Gascoyne Province of Western Australia.

Up to 1278ppm TREO and 93.5ppm Li in soil samples were returned while pegmatite sampling within REE anomalous zone returned 0.89% TREO in rock chips.

Further exploration for lithium at Lyons River has also identified pegmatite districts untested for lithium or rare earths potential including a large primary pegmatite swarm spanning a 9km x 6km are and numerous smaller pegmatite swarms within a major regional structural corridor.

Dalaroo’s managing director Harjinder Kehal says the company is excited by the REE results of 0.89% TREO.

“This suggests the pegmatites in this district are fertile for potential rare metal pegmatite associated mineralisation.”