LSR confirms heavy rare earths trend at US Virgin Mountain + first gold assays at Ned's Creek

Our Investment Lodestar Minerals (ASX: LSR) put out two announcements this week:

1. From its US heavy rare earths project (Virgin Mountain),and
2. From its WA gold project (Ned’s Creek).

First, today’s news from the WA asset.

LSR is in the middle of a 10,000m RC drill program at Ned’s Creek which is well over half complete with 48 holes for 6,391m drilled and assay results pending for over 2,600 samples.

Today’s announcement had results from the first two holes of the program - both hitting mineralisation:

(source)

That’s two mineralised zones in LNRC110 - a shallow oxide zone and a deeper fresh-rock shear zone with pyrite and quartz veining:

(source)

The first phase at Gidgee Flat is now complete, and the rig is moving to exploratory holes and then to the Contessa and Central Park prospects:

(source)

For a reference of what LSR will be aiming to show here, the targeted Mineral Resource Estimate at Ned’s Creek is 250k-300koz’s at 1.0-1.7 g/t gold, we covered when the drilling kicked off here

The Maiden Mineral Resource Estimate is targeted before the end of this year.

The latest from LSR’s US rare earth asset

Earlier in the week it was announced that LSR’s US team has now completed field activities at its Virgin Mountain HREE Project in the USA.

This confirmed continuity of xenotime-bearing rare earth element mineralisation along the mapped structural trend.

Here is a look from a prior announcement of what LSR currently has to work with, a 5km trend was identified prior with high grade sampling results, specifically from the heavy rare earth side of things:

(source)

This is a positive update as xenotime is a rare-earth phosphate mineral that generally is able to be processed easier than most others and it tends to host the more valuable heavy rare earths like:

• Yttrium
• Dysprosium
• Terbium
• Erbium
• Ytterbium
• Lutetium

These are the heavy rare earths with constrained global supply, and they typically command higher prices than the more abundant light rare earths.

Here are some of the uses:

Here is a look at an image included in the announcement of the US team on site:

(source)

LSR has now decided to push toward rapid drill target generation here with a high-resolution airborne radiometric (U/Th/K) and magnetic surveys planned over the project area.

The aim with this is to improve the accurate target generation across the 5km structural corridor, delineate the full extent of the mineralised shear system

So it is good to see things progressing here which we covered most recently when LSR kicked off exploration here a month ago.

LSR also has two copper assets in Chile

In our view the biggest catalysts in the LSR portfolio over the next ~8 weeks sit on the copper side.

Three Saints: maiden drilling here is now complete and on monday confirmed that this hole is now complete, having reached the limit of the rig at ~611m, just over the 600m planned.

(source)

Assay results are pending from holes L3SRD003 and L3SDD004, the most recent guidance on timing had the first hole (hole 3) coming back late may, so this might be a week or two away.

The second hole hit visible sulphides plus the skarn alteration, the same alteration style that hosts the giant Candelaria deposit nearby, this is what that looked like:

(source)

For context, Candelaria is a giant copper-gold mine owned by $36BN Lunding Mining, it has a resource here of over 5BN pounds of copper.

Meanwhile at Los Loros the drilling program is in planning following the recent acquisition of new geophysics, which defined five new copper-gold porphyry targets:

(source)

We covered this on Monday which you can see here and drilling scheduled to commence in June.

So on the copper side of things we have assay results from Three Saints coming any week now and drilling at Los Loros commencing in June.

(source)

What's next for LSR?

🔄 Chile drilling - Three Saints Project

Now we have two holes with visible copper in them.

What we are hoping to see next is the assays confirm that there is economic quantities (and hopefully enough for LSR to officially declare a discovery).

Here are the milestones we are tracking:

• ✅ Maiden drill hole completed (600m)
• ✅ Visible copper mineralisation identified (visible copper from 190m to 600m)
• ✅ Second diamond drill hole underway (TODAY, complete at 611m, assays pending)
• ✅ Second hole visual results
• 🔲 Assay results from hole 1 (First results expected from “Late May”)
• 🔲 Assay results from hole 2 (Assays expected “Early July)

🔄 Target generation on the US rare earths project

We want to see LSR continue to advance its US asset with mineralogical studies and then plan the next round of exploration.

Here are the milestones we are tracking for the US asset:

• ✅ Mapping and sampling (soil and rock chips)
• ✅ Mineralogical studies
• 🔄 Geophysics/ follow up field work (starting in April)
• 🔲 Drill targets confirmed

🔄 10,000m drilling program on WA gold project

Drilling on this asset started a few weeks ago.

We are hoping to see the 250,000 to 300,000 ounce exploration target converted into a maiden resource estimate post drilling.

Here are the milestones we are tracking on that project:

• ✅ Drilling starts
• 🔄 Assay results
• 🔲 Resource estimate

🔲 LSR also has a second copper project in Chile (Los Loros)

Beyond Three Saints, LSR also has an option to acquire a second copper project that was previously drilled by the United Nations and supermajor $78BN Anglo American.

(source)

Since 1969 no one has done any modern geophysics on that project - so there could be more to come on this front too.

Back in early February when LSR acquired the option, it was aiming to be drilling here in April this year, so LSR is expecting there to be newsflow from here in the near term also. (source)