Resouro Gold almost doubles high-grade foothold in Brazil. Image: Getty.
Mining
Rare earths and titanium play Resouro Gold is running hot with good news from the Tiros rare earths and titanium project after the release of more high grade assays and almost doubling its landholding.
The Tiros project in Brazil’s powerhouse mining state of Minas Gerais is already large scale with high titanium grades and Rare Earth Oxide grades comparable to the best clay style deposits in the world.
Now the latest assays from follow-up auger drilling have delivered impressive results including 10.5m at 7,181ppm total rare earths oxides (TREO), including 2,222ppm of high-value magnet metals neodymium and praseodymium (NdPr) from near surface along with 10.47% TiO2.
Another 8m at 5,768ppm TREO (1,085ppm NdPr) and 16.03% TiO2 was returned from surface.
These back up results from earlier this month including TREO of up to 7,197ppm with 1,444ppm NdPr from just 4m, all coming from the 24 auger holes drilled for 257m since July.
Samples from an additional 12 auger holes are currently being analysed and Resouro is looking forward to announcing those results in the coming weeks.
Chris Eager, president and director of Resouro, said: “Results from the follow up drill program at Tiros have been well above the historical average grade and we look forward to receiving further assay results from this program currently sitting with the lab, as well as accelerating our drill campaign at the project.”
At the same time Resouro has substantially boosted its footprint on the highly prospective ground from 177km2 to 477km2.
The company is now confident it has covered all the geologically prospective portions of the prolific Capacete Formation. That confidence is based on an extensive historical database of sampling, mapping and geophysics, including results from 1,0233m of drilling from 21 holes, and 3,000 surface samples.
A map showing the newly mineral rights in red. Pic: Resouro
The new southern Mineral Rights are adjacent to a railway line which leads to the deep-water port of Bahia with developed bulk materials handling and loading facilities.
As Resouro works towards a Preliminary Feasibility Study (PFS) for Tiros, the company started an air core drilling program last week, with two test holes successfully punched and drilling over the Capacete Formation under way.
A second AC drill rig is set to arrive next week and the drill team is being prepared to start work as soon as it hits the Tiros ground.
The current drill program is aiming to confirm the continuity of the mineralised zones within the Capacete Formation, as well as provide a wide range of metallurgical samples for the tests already in progress.
Resouro additionally has two auger rigs and one air core rig, and is mobilising a second reverse circulation rig and diamond drill rig for regional exploration within the extended package of Mineral Rights.
Further down the value chain, preliminary metallurgical testwork has so far resulted in TiO2, or anatase, 82% concentrate using basic conventional concentration techniques.
Eager commented: “Initial metallurgical results from the Brazilian lab have been encouraging, and we eagerly await results from world-class labs in Australia and Germany to further demonstrate the metallurgical characteristics of Tiros. On both fronts, we look forward to updating the market as results materialise.”
Importantly for the economics and ESG profile, penalty radioactive elements uranium and thorium levels have so far been low for a rare earths project, at less than 200ppm.
As well as adding scale to the high-tonnage project, the new mineral rights – like the original areas of the project – have areas of flat terrain where the Capacete Formation is at surface.
Tiros is characterised by an extensive and continuous layer of mineralisation averaging about 40m, with an enriched zone at the top, making it easy to mine and rehabilitate.
Additionally, the soft weathered ore with fine grain size does not require blasting or milling, which can enable lower cost and more environmentally sensitive processing.
As for infrastructure and logistics, a railway line passes through some of the new mineral rights that has direct connection to a number of other deep-water ports.
And only 350km from the state capital Belo Horizonte, the project also has excellent access to skilled labour.
The acquisition of the extra land also comes only a couple of weeks after Resouro’s $3.24 million capital raising and as the company prepares for its listing on the ASX to complement its current Toronto and Frankfurt listings.
The raising, led by Regal Funds Management, has given the company a strong balance sheet for progress the drill and test work programs at Tiros. Resouro currently owns a 33% stake in the project with an option to take that up to 90%.
There’s a lot of commentary about accelerating rare earths demand driven by the renewable energy transition, but the less familiar to investors is the burgeoning global market for titanium and titanium oxide.
The global market was currently valued at US$24.7bn in 2021 and it’s projected to reach US$33.5bn by 2026 – a compound average growth rate of 6.3%. That’s due to rising demand for pigments from aerospace, defence, and chemical process industries and the fact that it’s complicated to recycle.
This article was developed in collaboration with Resouro Gold, 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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