Meeka Metals has begun infill drilling at its Circle Valley rare earths project near Esperance as the company looks toward delivering an initial mineral resource for the site in the June quarter of this year.
Last year the explorer produced some impressive results from its maiden drill program at the operation with highlights including one assay that went 12m at 2690 parts per million total rare earth oxides, or “TREO” from 20m including 4m at a mammoth 6894ppm TREO from 24m.
Additional assays showed similar results with 8m going 2766ppm TREO from 28m including 4m at 5031ppm TREO from 32m.
Meeka will also look to complete strike extension drilling at its Anomaly A prospect where the company hit a 23m intercept at 5.09 grams per tonne gold from 13m including 10m going 9.35 g/t gold from 15m.
The company expects the rare earths infill drilling at Circle Valley to be completed during the March quarter whilst the gold extension drilling is predicted to begin within weeks.
Meeka Metals Managing Director, Tim Davidson said: “Results received in 2022 show a shallowing cover profile to the northwest at Circle Valley, corresponding with a +1,000ppm high-grade component of the rare earth mineralisation, rich in NdPr magnet rare earth elements.”
In December the explorer received positive results from test work at Circle Valley with up to 90.4 per cent of the elements recovered in the less than 20 micrometre fraction.
The company says cheap and simple screening and hydro-cyclone classification can be applied to discard the coarse fraction greater than 20 micrometres and remove up to 65.5 per cent of the mass whilst retaining up to 90.4 per cent of the rare earth elements.
The test work also shows that grades increase by up to 91 per cent by rejecting the coarser fraction across the light, heavy and magnet rare earths categories.
The company has also recorded consistently high neodymium and praseodymium levels with a standout figure of 31 per cent and several intersections reporting between 20 per cent to 30 per cent. The company’s latest assays also returned high grades of scandium of up to 54 grams per tonne.
Meeka owns 100 per cent of two exploration licences at Circle Valley covering 222 square kilometres of predominantly freehold agricultural land currently used for crop and livestock farming.
The project is one of two rare earths plays the company has near WA’s southern coast with the second being Cascade to the south-west. Cascade was pegged on the back of Circle Valley’s potential and is an impressive tenure of more than 2000 square kilometres. Notable strikes from Cascade include 16m at 2223ppm TREO from a shallow depth of 44m.
With shallow rare earths mineralisation that has yielded significant results in addition to a series of decent gold strikes, the market will be keeping a close eye on what Meeka can unearth in its latest drill campaign.
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By Matt Birney
