A whiff of rare earths at LRS’s Cloud Nine
Our lithium development Investment, Latin Resources (ASX:LRS) also has a halloysite-kaolin project called Cloud Nine, which as of this morning, looks to also have rare earths potential.
It’s early days, but LRS did analysis on “a small random selection (one out of every 20) of existing <45 µm fraction samples collected from the recent infill drill programme” at the WA halloysite-kaolin project.
We like the results from this initial sampling program:
- Anomalous rare earths concentrations in 38% of the samples
- 3,617 ppm, 0.36% total rare earth oxide (TREO)
- Of these TREO results average key magnetic rare earth oxides (MREO) of 21-28%, mainly Neodymium (Nd) and Praseodymium (Pr)
Nd and Pr are found in the permanent magnets in electric vehicles and wind turbines - two key planks of the energy transition.
This would be a clay hosted rare earths deposit which is amenable to extraction via weak acids or ionic solutions.
As a result, the threshold for economic clay hosted deposits is lower than other rare earths deposits - LRS says 500–2000 ppm TREO is suitable for clay hosted deposits.
LRS’s results came in well over the top of those parameters - so our initial take here is that this is a very promising development in a macro environment that favours rare earths discoveries due to increasingly prominent geopolitical factors.
What’s next for LRS? In addition to the upcoming mineral resource estimate at LRS’s Brazilian lithium project, we’re looking for LRS to analyse further samples and hopefully further down the track, update the resource estimate model at Cloud Nine to include these rare earths results.
