Rare earths in rock chips?

This morning our junior exploration Investment Techgen Metals (ASX: TG1) put out some news detailing the rare earths prospectivity of its copper project in WA.

Today's announcement highlighted that rock chips taken from the project showed rare earths prospectivity with grades as high as 0.1885% total rare earth's oxide (TREO).

TG1 also detailed the thorium anomalies found when re-analysing the geophysical data available over the project - the significance being that thorium anomalies can be an indicator of rare earth's mineralisation.

While TG1's exploration here has mostly focused on copper, news like this isn't uncommon for junior explorers targeting a specific commodity but come across prospectivity for additional materials.

We saw similar activity from junior explorers after lithium became hot in 2017.

One that stands out is the Kidman Resources spodumene hosted lithium discovery, made underneath a multi million ounce gold resource.

Kidman was bought by Wesfarmers in a deal worth ~$776M.

So while today's news doesn't relate directly to our Investment thesis for TG1 we will be watching to see how things develop over the coming months with respect to the rare earths targets at TG1's project.

What's next for TG1?

1) Assay results from WA copper projects

Having recently finished drilling its two WA copper projects (Mt Boggola and Station Creek), assays are expected from both projects sometime this month.

We also note that the company is doing some geophysical surveying at Mt Boggola looking for more drill targets that it would include in future drilling programs.

2) Soil sampling results from NSW gold discovery

TG1 is following up its recent discovery with a detailed soil sampling program, aiming to identify high priority follow up drilling targets.

Assay results from soil sampling are expected later this month.