AIC Mines Increases Jericho Ore Reserves

THE DRILL SERGEANT: AIC Mines (ASX: A1M) reported an updated Ore Reserve estimate for the company’s 100 per cent-owned Jericho copper deposit in north Queensland.

The Jericho deposit is located just four kilometres south of the company’s Eloise copper mine.

AIC Mines explained the Jericho Ore Reserves increased thanks to the inclusion of results from a drilling program undertaken in 2023 and updated mine designs.

Jericho Ore Reserves now total 3.2 million tonnes at 1.9 per cent copper and 0.4 grams per tonne silver containing 61,100 tonnes of copper and 37,000 ounces of gold.

The update represents an 86 per cent increase in contained copper and an 86 per cent increase in contained gold.

AIC anticipates ongoing drilling to further increase Jericho Ore Reserves.

“We completed the acquisition of Jericho in January last year,” AIC Mines managing director Aaron Colleran said in the company’s ASX announcement.

“We’ve barely owned the deposit for 12 months and in this time we have significantly increased the Jericho Mineral Resource and Ore Reserve, completed mining studies, environmental studies, metallurgical testwork plus an Eloise expansion study.

“It has been an incredibly busy and incredibly successful period for AIC Mines.

“Why are we pushing so hard, moving so quickly? Simple, Jericho is a game changer for Eloise.

“It provides a pathway to expanding annual production at Eloise to over 20,000 tonnes of copper and 10,000 ounces of gold in concentrate.

“Mining at Jericho will be lower cost than Eloise as it is much shallower, commencing below only 50 metres of cover.

“Expansion of the Eloise processing plant will reduce operating costs through economies of scale and smarter equipment.

“Jericho de-risks production by increasing the number of available ore sources.

“The world needs more copper as we transition away from fossil fuels. We are focused on delivering into that demand.”

 

TO READ THE FULL ANNOUNCEMENT: CLICK HERE

 

CGN Aiming to Make Next Major West Arunta Discovery

THE CONFERENCE CALLER: Relative ASX newcomer CGN Resources is hoping to make a major discovery in the hot West Arunta region of Western Australia. By Kristie Batten

The company listed on the ASX in October 2023 after a A$10 million initial public offering but has been active in the West Arunta since 2010, making it one of the early movers.

“Now there is no ground left in the West Arunta,” CGN managing director Stan Wholley told the Tribeca Future Facing Commodities Conference in Singapore.

“It’s probably one of the hottest districts at the moment.”

That’s largely thanks to WA1 Resources’ Luni niobium discovery in the region, but IGO, Encounter Resources, Rio Tinto and Tali Resources are also active.

CGN stands for copper-gold-nickel but the company is also looking for critical minerals including rare earths.

Wholley said the West Arunta could be one of Australia’s last unexplored copper provinces and had known iron oxide-copper-gold mineralisation.

“To not have a big red blob [on the map] in this area is unusual and we hope to be the ones to find it,” he said.

CGN has identified six priority targets.

Snorky, Horton, Surus and Tantor are IOCG targets, Shep is a nickel target and Hathi is a rare earth target.

The company just completed induced polarisation surveys at Surus, Shep, Snorky and Horton, which confirmed the presence of gravity anomalies at all four prospects.

Drilling will begin at Surus next month, assisted by A$220,000 in Exploration Incentive Scheme funding from the WA government.

CGN has already spent A$7 million on geological data.

“Which gave us a really great pool of geoscience data,” Wholley said.

The company still has A$8.5 million in cash.

“That gives us enough money to deliver on our project pipeline,” Wholley said.

“We’ve got cash, we’ve got the time, let’s get it done.”

CGN shares hit an all-time high of 32 cents during ASX trading on Wednesday.

 

Mr Lithium Sees Price Bottoming

THE CONFERENCE CALLER: Lithium prices should start to rebound this year after a dramatic 12 months, according to Global Lithium’s Joe Lowry. By Kristie Batten

Lowry, aka ‘Mr Lithium’, told the Tribeca Future Facing Commodities Conference in Singapore that any market that was expected to grow tenfold over 10 years would experience growing pains and volatility.

“I still believe it is the lithium decade – I absolutely believe that,” he said.

Lithium prices dropped by more than 80% last year and have continued to fall in 2024 – though there has recently been signs of stability.

Both Canaccord Genuity and UBS have called the bottom for prices in recent weeks.

“I’m not going to say it has [bottomed] for sure but I think it’s going to happen this year, if it hasn’t already happened,” Lowry said.

Lowry said the lithium narrative was extremely negative.

“I’ve been in business for 34 years and I’ve never seen sentiment this negative,” he said.

“And it doesn’t make sense because even at US$15,000 a tonne, historically, that’s a pretty high lithium price.”

Lowry admitted that he never expected lithium carbonate equivalent prices to reach US$40,000/t, let alone US$80,000/t.

But he pointed out that there wasn’t one single lithium price.

“The China spot price is not the lithium price. There are a range of lithium prices,” Lowry said.

“So, when you talk about lithium price bottoming, there’s going to be multiple bottoms because there’s multiple prices.”

Lowry said there was a misconception that he was a “wild lithium bull”.

“I think it’s pretty much a balanced market until the end of the decade where I think it’s going to be hard to get to three million tonnes of supply,” he said.

He noted that lithium projects were always late and the current fall in prices had disincentivised new production.

Even the biggest lithium bears at Goldman Sachs had forecast a deficit in 2030.

“I think there’s going to be market tightness and that’s going to put prices back up,” Lowry said.

“The real question is how high will price go? And I believe what the last cycle over the last 18 months has showed us is that there is swing supply, the lepidolite and the grinding up ceramic material and bringing in DSO from Africa.

“If you get if you haven’t another run up above US$40,000, all of that’s going to come back into the market and it’s going to come back in quickly.

“So, I think we have found that there’s a natural cap on a price run. I’m not saying prices will never go to US$80,000 again, but if it goes there it’s not going to be there for very long.”

Lowry said the most transparent reporter of lithium prices was Chilean producer SQM in its quarterly reports.

SQM reported a realised price of US$16 per kilogram of LCE in the December 2023 quarter and Lowry believes for the March quarter, it will be “at least US$16/kg”.

“My point is, if this is the low, it’s three times higher than the last low,” he said.

Canaccord forecasts LCE to average US$16/kg this year, while UBS is at US$15/kg and Macquarie is at US$20/kg.

“All things kind of lead to higher lithium prices – how high they go, I don’t know,” Lowry said.

“My thought is this year the price gets into the low US$20s, probably in Q4.”

Goldman is once again bearish at just US$11/kg.

“I don’t think it’s possible for them to be right,” Lowry said.

Lowry said there was a chance LCE could jump back to US$40,000-50,000/t but he hoped that didn’t happen.

“I’d rather see a stable environment.”

 

ASX Mining Stocks Regaining Momentum: Argonaut

THE CONFERENCE CALLER: The worst is over for mining stocks, according to Argonaut head of research Hayden Bairstow. By Kristie Batten

The year started poorly for equities but Bairstow told the Tribeca Future Facing Commodities Conference in Singapore that green shoots were emerging.

“We are seeing a little bit of a glimmer of hope,” he said.

Of the 50 or so presenting companies at the conference this week, roughly two thirds had experienced share price gains over the past month.

Bairstow said momentum was building and encouragingly, it was across most commodity groups.
“We’re seeing a decent recovery across the board,” he said.

“We are off the bottom and it’s all looking quite positive.”

Lithium was the worst-performing commodity in 2023, but Bairstow believes the price has “probably” bottomed.

Pilbara Minerals and Albemarle Corporation have auctioned lithium cargoes at prices above spot in recent weeks.

“Those sort of negative momentum stories are slowing and in fact, have turned to the positive,” Bairstow said.

Still, share prices of lithium producers had outperformed price.

While prices fell by more than 80% in 2023, Pilbara and Mineral Resources were down by around 20% each since the peak, while IGO and Arcadium Lithium were down 50%.

“The intriguing thing is the market at the big end is happy to look through the lithium price fall and the trough,” Bairstow said.

So far in 2024, the shining lights in the mining market have been uranium and gold.

“In terms of importance in the Australian market, gold really does dominate,” Bairstow said.

The merger of Newcrest Mining and Newmont Corporation late last year pushed the size of the ASX gold space to beyond A$100 billion.

Meanwhile, uranium prices rose to more than US$100 per pound in January, driving a strong performance in equities.

Bairstow said most uranium stocks were up 100-150% over the past 12 months.
“It’s been nothing short of extraordinary,” he said.

 

 

Palladium Making a Comeback: Chalice

THE CONFERENCE CALLER: Chalice Mining managing director Alex Dorsch says palladium is a misunderstood critical mineral. By Kristie Batten

“Palladium is in a very weird position because people perceive it as a metal not needed for the energy transition,” Dorsch told the first day of the Tribeca Future Facing Commodities Conference in Singapore.

The key driver of palladium demand is plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) and internal combustion engine vehicles.

Dorsch said consumers were favouring PHEVs over battery electric vehicles due to their lower cost, longer range and the lack of charging infrastructure.

While the sale of EVs in February were down 15% year-on-year, the sale of PHEVs jumped 25%.

“That’s not the narrative the media is telling you right now,” Dorsch said.

“There’s a perception that palladium demand is going to be destroyed by EVs but that is absolutely not true.”

Prices for palladium have been at cyclical lows but are creeping higher.

Palladium supply has been decreasing, while demand remains “robust”.

Chalice estimates about 50% of the global palladium market is underwater at current prices.

In 2022, 78% of global palladium supply came from Russia and South Africa.

Chalice’s proposed Gonneville project would be in the second quartile of global palladium projects on a cost basis.

“We’re going to out-compete South Africa,” Dorsch said.

Gonneville hosts a resource of 16 million ounces of palladium-platinum-gold, as well as 860,000 tonnes of nickel, 520,000t of copper and 83,000t of cobalt.

It is the world’s largest undeveloped palladium resource.

“The Western World has had a capex holiday and a discovery holiday,” Dorsch said.

Chalice is working on a update to its high-grade resource, after which it will update its scoping study.
Earlier this month, Argonaut head of research Hayden Bairstow pointed out that Chalice’s share price had underperformed against the rebounding palladium price.

“We retain our bullish outlook for palladium, with our base case assuming a further 6% in FY25 from current levels and circa 20-30% in the medium-term, with our long-term price US$1300/oz 22% above current spot prices,” he said.

On that basis, Bairstow upgraded his price target for Chalice by 9% to $2.40. Chalice shares closed at $1.03 on Tuesday.

 

 

‘Dangerous’: West Needs to Act on Battery Materials

THE CONFERENCE CALLER: Benchmark Mineral Intelligence’s Henry Sanderson has warned Western nations to stay focused on critical minerals in order to challenge China’s dominance. By Kristie Batten

Sanderson, who is also the author of the book Volt Rush, told the Tribeca Future Facing Commodities Conference in Singapore today that countries including Australia, Canada, Indonesia and Argentina had become very important to the energy transition.

“But at the heart of this transition is China and the US and the relationship between these two superpowers,” he said.

“In many senses, a lot of these other countries are trying to find their place in this new cold war between China and the US.”

Canada has moved to ban Chinese investment in its lithium sector.

“But countries like Indonesia, Argentina, Chile, they’re much more open to Chinese investment and supply,” Sanderson said.

Early days

Sanderson said the energy transition was still in its early stages.

In 2023, battery demand was about 1 terawatt hour but is expected to reach 20Twh by 2050.

“And the implications on raw materials are really quite significant,” Sanderson said.

“With lithium, around 12 million tonnes, up from around 1 million tonnes at the moment.”

Benchmark’s rough calculation is that more than 300 new mines would be needed to meet demand by 2035.

Sanderson said there would be shortages of lithium, nickel and cobalt due to long lead times for mines.

“There’s a fundamental mismatch between the time it takes to develop mines and the other parts of the supply chain,” he said.

“In China, they can build chemical processing cathode and battery cell manufacturing in about a year, so they can really build these plants extremely quickly.

“But it’s the mines that is the sort of limiting factor in terms of the time it takes to develop them.”

‘Hostile world’

Sanderson said China was dominant on the processing side, cathode and anode production and battery cell production, but it was still quite reliant on imports for the raw materials.

“So if you think of China’s perspective, they need to secure these raw materials outside their borders and they face an increasingly hostile world,” he said.

“As I said, Canada has stopped Chinese companies from investing in lithium and we’re probably going to see more of the same, so they need these raw materials to feed the industrial sectors that provide the jobs and economic opportunity in China.

“So that’s why we see Chinese investment in African and Argentinean lithium etc and also the development of domestic lithium within China.

“China is really thinking of energy security, as is Europe and the US.”

On the flipside, Sanderson said where the West was vulnerable was on the processing side and the cathode and anode side.

Sanderson said China had “excessive dominance” in rare earths and graphite.

“China’s dominance is set to remain throughout this decade into the early part of next decade so I think if the West wants to de-risk, it should really focus on these areas where China’s dominance is 90-plus percent,” he said.

US ‘back in the game’

Sanderson said the US Inflation Reduction Act was a significant piece of legislation.

“And what we see in the IRA is very protectionist measures and very, very similar to how China has developed this clean energy industry so it’s like the US is trying to do a China,” he said.

Under the IRA, companies can receive grants or tax if critical minerals are mined or processed in the US.

“Foreign entities of concern cannot be involved in this supply chain – China being the most significant entity of concern,” Sanderson said.

But Sanderson pointed to the fact that Western companies like Albemarle Corporation and Arcadium Lithium could build downstream capacity in China for a 10th of the cost of the US.

“These IRA restrictions are coming in, but the costs are increasing for a lot of projects in the West. So how do we compete with China?”

Sanderson said innovation, hydropower and government subsidies could make the West more competitive.

But he warned it wasn’t as simple as it sounded.

“The Inflation Reduction Act caused a lot of backlash in Europe as a lot of investments that were going to be made in Europe have gone to the US, so there are tensions in this arrangement,” Sanderson said.

“If all these countries get together, there is enough to create new supply chains and really focus on the task.”

Sanderson said when it came to the energy transition, geopolitics was of high concern and were worth following closely.

“Because in Western democracies, we need to get buy-in from populations for this project of de-risking from China and building out the supply chains,” he said.

“Because China is so dominant, we’re already seeing voices coming out against EVs, because they say it will lead us to reliance on China, so we’re in a very dangerous area where, in the West, we need to maintain this vision and this strategy that we’ve embarked on.”

 

 

Mining Finance Model Needs a Shake-Up: Tribeca

THE CONFERENCE CALLER: The mining finance model needs to change if the industry is to compete with the technology sector, according to Tribeca Investment Partners Singapore’s Scott Clements. By Kristie Batten

Speaking on the first day of the Tribeca Future Facing Commodities Conference in Singapore, Clements said the three key investment themes for 2024 were the energy transition and decarbonisation, onshoring supply chains and artificial intelligence and big tech.

However, he pointed out that investment flows had been narrowly focused to date.

Clements said the thing that was being missed is that all three investment themes would create increased demand for power and for the raw materials that fed into supply chains.

He used copper as an example, with new demand for mined copper from artificial intelligence data centres set to surge at a time of declining production from operating projects.

“That supply gap in 2030 is about 7 million tonnes globally,” Clements said.

For perspective, the world’s largest copper mine, BHP and Rio Tinto’s Escondida in Chile, produces about 1Mt of copper per year.

“You potentially need seven of those,” Clements said.

Clements said the current extractive industry model was far too slow, citing S&P Global Intelligence figures stating that the average time from discovery to production for a deposit was 15.7 years.

“Any first-year finance student could tell you if you’re pitching a project that doesn’t achieve cashflow for 16 years, it’s a pretty hard sell,” he said.

Complicating matters is the challenged finance model for early-stage resource companies.
Clements said there needed to be a new model, closer to the venture capital model.

“In my view, that probably needs to be led by governments and end users,” he said.

“Governments need to lead the way.”

According to Clements, the most significant thing governments could do was streamline the permitting process.

He said there was too many conflicts between federal governments and state/territory/provincial governments in many cases.

“There also needs to be more accountability on timeliness,” Clements said, adding that could be achieved without compromising environmental regulations.

At the same time, Clements said miners could be doing a better job on public relations.

He said the public only really heard negative stories about mining and pointed to an ABC headline which stated that federal taxation revenue from mining covered the salaries of all of Australia’s teachers and police.

“Those things aren’t widely known,” he said.

Miners also needed to do more to appeal to young people, according to Clements.

“The industry is typically populated by white guys in their 50s,” he said.

There are still only two mining companies in the S&P 500 – Newmont Corporation and Freeport-McMoRan – and the market capitalisations of the 10 largest battery materials miners is still less than one 10th of the 10 largest tech companies.

Clements used Andrew Forrest and Gina Rinehart as examples of the value that could be generated by mining.

“It can generate extraordinary wealth,” he said.

A more recent example he used was Azure Minerals, which had risen 10 times since its appearance at the same conference in Singapore a year ago, thanks to its Andover lithium discovery.

Azure is set to be acquired by Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting and Chile’s SQM for A$1.7 billion next month.

Azure managing director Tony Rovira made his final presentation for Azure at the conference today before he “rides off into the sunset”.

He said if someone had invested A$10,000 in Azure a year ago, it would be worth A$112,000 today.
“Azure Minerals is an example of what you can achieve if you invest in the right company,” Rovira said.

Future Metals Positioning for PGM Rebound

THE CONFERENCE CALLER: While platinum and palladium prices are trading at cyclical lows, Future Metals (ASX: FME) says it will be ready when prices eventually recover. By Kristie Batten

Future Metals owns the Panton project in Western Australia’s Kimberley region, which has a resource of 92.9 million tonnes at 2 grams per tonne palladium equivalent for 6 million ounces of contained palladium equivalent.

Its current operational plan is based on a resource of 37.2 million tonnes at 3.3 grams per tonne palladium equivalent for 3.9 million ounces, including a high-grade component of 10.8Mt at 7g/t palladium equivalent for 2.4Moz.

“You simply do not find grades this big in the Western world,” Future Metals executive chairman Patrick Walta told the RIU Explorers Conference in Fremantle.

“That grade … is massive and it affords us a lot of flexibility and the ability to get a big operation up and running in a tier one jurisdiction.”

There has already been more than $50 million spent at Panton, including a 500 metres decline, which Walta said shortened the time frame to production.

A scoping study outlined capital costs of $267 million for an operation producing 117,000 ounces per annum of platinum group metals, as well as 1200 tonnes per annum of nickel and 134,000tpa of chromite, at all-in sustaining costs of US$789 an ounce over nine years.

That would make Panton a top five PGM producer in the Western world, which Walta said made the company and project “investable” and gave it credibility.

“At the moment, PGM prices are low but that’s fine – we don’t want to be a producer right now,” he said.

“In fact, we’re quite happy to see production coming out of the market.”

Under the base case scenario, the scoping study returned a post-tax net present value of $153 million, internal rate of return of 21% and a payback period of 4.1 years.

Using a five-year average PGM price case increased the NPV to $311 million, the IRR to 31% and the payback period to 3.2 years.

Palladium is currently trading at around a six-year low and consultancy Metals Focus expects prices to remain under pressure this year.

Last week, ANZ noted that platinum looked inexpensive against the backdrop of a growing market deficit.

The bank is bullish on platinum and neutral on palladium, but said it expected palladium prices to recover.

Walta said that at the current PGM basket price, 40% of producers were underwater.

“The top quartile is haemorrhaging cash, supply is being stripped out of the market,” he said.

“A lot of that top quartile is old, deep, South African mines that were really propped up by really high prices over the past couple of years – they shouldn’t be in production, and they won’t be.

“The curve will change; supply will be stripped out of the market.

“It’s a story as old as time – the cure for low prices is low prices.

“We will be ready for that price rise.”

 

Hamelin Gold Excited by Multiple Tanami Prospects

THE CONFERENCE CALLER: Greenfields explorer Hamelin Gold (ASX: HMG) is hopeful of making the next major discovery in Australia’s elusive Tanami province. By Kristie Batten

Hamelin Gold’s 3500 square kilometres of ground makes it the dominant landholder on the Western Australian side of the Tanami.

Its ground sits directly along strike from Newmont Corporation’s 20 million ounce Callie mine, part of the world-class Tanami operations.

“It’s odd in an orogenic belt to have such a giant and not a string of 2-5 million ounce deposits within the same province and that’s the sort of scale opportunity we believe that Hamelin Gold has,” managing director Peter Bewick told the RIU Explorers Conference in Fremantle last week.

The reason, Bewick suggested, that another giant had not yet been found, as due to there being little to no outcrop in the region and extensive sand cover.

“You could hide pretty well anything under there,” he said.

“Given Callie has such a small footprint, we think there’s ample opportunity to hide a few Callies in 3500 square kilometres.”

Bewick said exploration is in Hamelin’s DNA.

Given the difficulty and expense of exploring in the Tanami, Bewick acknowledged the company had to be good at prediction and detection.

“Without going broke drilling holes all over the place,” he added.

The company has turned to technology to assist.

Use of CSIRO’s “groundbreaking” Ultrafine soils technology has already yielded results, identifying two large soil anomalies in the Sultan gold corridor.

Initial drilling returned an “outstanding” 7.6m at 3.2 grams per tonne from 326.2m, including 1.1m at 15.9g/t gold.

“One thing we generated was a beautiful 1km gold anomaly under sand cover with a 700m-long bedrock gold anomaly underneath,” Bewick said.

“We’re super excited to get an RC rig out here.

“This is the sort of footprint that could be sitting over a major gold system.”

However, it’s not the gold potential that caught the eye of the world’s largest miner.

Hamelin drilled a hole into a “rather weird-looking magnetic anomaly” called Hawkeye.

“What we got was not what we expected,” Bewick said.

The hole hit magmatic nickel-copper sulphides.

“It’s the first time this style of mineralisation has been identified in the Tanami,” said Bewick.

It was that result which prompted Hamelin to apply for BHP’s exploration accelerator Xplor.

Last month Hamelin found out it was one of six successful applicants out of a total of 529 companies and prospectors who applied.

As part of the program, Hamelin will receive up to US$500,000 of non-dilutive funding from BHP and receive mentoring and technical support.

There’s also the potential for additional investment and partnerships down the road.
“We’re pretty excited they’re excited,” Bewick said.

“If it’s of interest to BHP, it could be fascinating for our shareholders.”

Hamelin is well-placed for a junior explorer. Aside from the interest from BHP, global major Gold Fields and ASX 200 producer Silver Lake Resources each hold 15 per cent of the company.

Hamelin’s current market capitalisation of $11.9 million and healthy cash balance of $5.2 million (at December 31), gives it an enterprise value of just $6.7 million.

Now’s The Time to Shop for Lithium Stocks: Southam Says

THE CONFERENCE CALLER: Lithium explorers are feeling down and out due to a slump in prices but one managing director says that’s the perfect time to buy. By Kristie Batten

According to Bell Potter Securities, most lithium stocks were down 30-40% in January.

Cygnus Metals (ASX: CY5) is one of those, down 42.5% in January.

But managing director David Southam has seen this all before, having been a director of lithium success story Kidman Resources before it was sold to Wesfarmers in 2019 during the last “lithium winter”.

“If there’s ever a time to be looking at lithium stocks, now is the time to look into it,” he told attendees of the 2024 RIU Explorers Conference in Fremantle.

Cygnus has a market capitalisation of just $20 million but is quietly working to tick off milestones at its three lithium projects in Canada.

A key achievement last year was the announcement of a 10.1 million tonne at 1.04% lithium oxide maiden resource at the Pontax project.

Southam pointed out the resource was delineated after just 10,000m of drilling.

“We’ve got 44 kilometres of strike and we’ve really only tested a couple [of kilometres] so there’s plenty more to be found there,” he said.

“We’re drilling there now.”

Pontax is just 30km south of Arcadium Lithium’s James Bay project, which is North America’s largest lithium deposit.

Cygnus says the almost identical mineralogy between the two deposits indicates the same or similar source granite.

The company also owns the earlier stage Auclair project, which is 60km from the 55.7Mt Whabouchi deposit.

Spodumene-bearing pegmatites have been confirmed over a 6km strike length.

Further field work, including soil sampling, is underway across the large land package.

“It’s not necessarily sexy, but with 416 square kilometres, it’s how you pinpoint where to explore,” Southam said.

Cygnus’ third James Bay lithium project is Sakami, which is just 44km from Patriot Battery Metals’ Corvette discovery.

The project has never been explored for lithium and initial work was cut short by last year’s wildfires in the region.

Cygnus’ 823 square kilometre landholding in the James Bay lithium district makes it the largest ASX-listed landholder in Quebec.

“We’re also next to large deposits,” Southam said.

“All the major companies are in the region but exploration is something which is missing in all of their portfolios.”

Cygnus has also made a clay-hosted rare earths discovery at Bencubbin in Western Australia.
“This is really flying under the radar,” Southam said.

The company has discovered large-scale rare earth element enrichment over a 22km strike length and is now awaiting metallurgical test work from ANSTO.