ASX-listed explorer White Cliff Minerals has concluded a maiden 49-hole, 1861m air-core drilling program at its Hines Hill rare earths project in WA’s Wheatbelt region. The campaign follows the discovery of a pair of potentially mineralised magnetic features and the return of soil sample results grading up to 550 parts per million total rare earth oxides, or “TREO”.
The company says it ploughed holes ranging between 8m to 92m in search of the commodity and has subsequently sent 716 drill samples along with more than 1000 geochemical soil samples to an assay laboratory.
Interestingly, the company says the magnetic features could offer carbonatite-hosted rare earths mineralisation – a deposit-style which has been hitting the headlines of late following WA1 Resources' discovery at its West Arunta project in WA.
WA1’s stock price ran over 2000 per cent after the breakthrough and briefly straddled a high of $3.02, a remarkable run considering just three weeks prior it was at 13.5c a share.
Headline intercepts from the West Arunta project include 54m at 0.62 per cent niobium pentoxide and 0.18 per cent TREO from 162m within a longer 142m hit running 0.31 per cent niobium pentoxide and 0.17 per cent TREO from 74m.
Whilst its still early days for White Cliff the market has seemingly grown an appetite for carbonite-hosted rare earths and should the assay results come back positive the explorer could be off to the races.
In addition, the company has also completed a round of geochemical sampling at its North Kellerberrin rare earths project west of Hines Hill.
The campaign at North Kellerberrin saw the explorer bag up 813 samples on a nominal 200m spacing.
Perth-based White Cliff considers North Kellerberrin prospective for ionic clay style mineralisation – another in-demand style of rare earths that commonly supports low-cost drilling and high mineral content.
The company is part of a growing wave of Australian-based operators seeking to provide a local alternative to China-sourced material by hunting down clay-hosted rare earths domestically.
White Cliff Technical Director Ed Mead said:“It is great to get drilling at Hines Hill, as this is how you find orebodies, and we also took the opportunity to expand the geochemical sampling program at Hines Hill and over the new North Kellerberrin REE project at the same time, and now look forward to the return of assay results.”
Global interest in rare earths has surged in recent years following the material’s ongoing use in low-carbon energy applications. The commodity is typically used to manufacture permanent magnets – a crucial ingredient in the production of electric vehicles and wind turbines.
Notably, rare earths also boast a range of alternative uses outside of the electric vehicle industry and play a starring role in the military, medical and robotics sectors.
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