Rare earths drilling scheduled for May, drill plan confirmed

Our Catalyst Hunter rare earths investment, Frontier Resources (ASX:FNT), gave us a closer look at the targets that the company will be drilling in May.

We previously covered the EM surveys that FNT ran where it generated 12 high priority drill targets and the results from a recent rock chip sampling program which returned peak rare earth grades >8% in and around these high priority drill targets.

To read the deep dives into both of these check out our previous Catalyst Hunter coverage below:

• 15 Feb 2022 - EM targets identified - rare earths drilling event next quarter
• 21 March 2022 - FNT Rock Chip Samples are in - Peak Grade >8%

In today’s announcement, FNT detailed each proposed drillhole and the reasoning for its inclusion in the upcoming drilling program.

There are ~41 proposed drillholes across the Lyons prospects and ~22 across the Edmunds prospect.

Interestingly, FNT also confirmed that these priority drill targets were displaying more and more similarities to Hastings Technology Metals (capped at $558M) Yangibana rare earth deposit when compared using magnetic imagery.

FNT looks to have designed the drilling program to test all of the targets picked up via the EM surveys. FNT is following a similar strategy that Hastings used when it made the Yangibana discovery.

We detailed this similar approach in our previous article covering the EM targets here.

What’s next for FNT?

FNT have now confirmed that the programme of works for the RC drilling program has been approved and that heritage surveys were ongoing to allow for site works to commence.

In today’s announcement, FNT guided for drilling to commence at some point in May after the heritage survey approvals were granted.

Alongside this, FNT has also started some metallurgical test work to test whether or not the ironstones discovered on its project can be commercially processed. This is effectively FNT getting some of the work that would generally be done after drilling, earlier.

We have been looking forward to this upcoming drilling program ever since announcing our investment in FNT back in February, with the drilling program being key Objective #2 in our 2022 FNT Investment Memo.

To see all of the objectives we want to see FNT achieve in 2022, the reasons for our investment and the key risks to our Investment thesis, check out our 2022 Investment Memo here.