St George Mining (ASX: SGQ) has announced a significant discovery of high-grade rare earths mineralisation at its 100%-owned Araxá Project in Minas Gerais, Brazil.
Grades up to 13.4% TREO (134,000ppm TREO) have been confirmed in the assays for the first 22 auger drill holes, which were completed as part of an extensive auger, reverse circulation and diamond drill program at Araxá that got underway earlier this month.
All auger holes intersecting high-grade mineralisation including AXAG022, which was drilled to a depth of 14m and intersected 13.5m @ 12.34% TREO from 0.5m with the hole ending in mineralisation of 13.4% TREO. The ratio of NdPr to TREO is up to 35%, with NdPr values up to 3.33% NdPr (33,300ppm NdPr).
The auger drilling was designed as a reconnaissance program of widely spaced, shallow drill holes to test an underexplored area approximately 1km east of the existing Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) for the Araxá – and has successfully discovered a very significant extension to the known high-grade JORC compliant deposit.
The new discovery supports the potential to expand the large carbonatite-hosted MRE at Araxá, which is the same style of deposit as the two major producing REE mines outside of China – Mountain Pass in California and Mt Weld in Western Australia.
Resource expansion and definition drilling continues at Araxá with five rigs in operation. Follow-up drilling for the new discovery will be scheduled as part of the extensive auger, RC and diamond drilling program already underway.
“We could not have hoped for better results from the initial drilling with assays received for the first batch of 22 holes confirming high-grade rare earths from surface across a broad area of 0.5 sq km,” executive chairman John Prineas said.
“The exceptionally high grades of TREO and NdPr are impressive and suggest we have discovered an area which is very rich in rare earths mineralisation.
“With an existing JORC-compliant rare earths resource that is already world-class, we are excited by the growth potential that this new discovery highlights.
“We will now prioritise follow-up drilling with RC and diamond drilling to scope out the extent of this new mineralised area, which has potential to significantly add to the existing large-scale JORC compliant resource at the project.”
