VKA samples 14.7% tungsten grades from US asset - US announces $17BN Critical Minerals stockpile

Our US tungsten Investment Viking Mines (ASX: VKA) just put out a batch of sampling results from its Linka project in Nevada, USA.

Only ~36 hours after the US government announced a US$12BN (~A$17BN) critical minerals stockpile - which is also based in Nevada… ~200km away from VKA’s project.

Tungsten has military uses in munitions (bullets), vehicles and body armour, missiles and radiation shields… at the moment the USA is 100% beholden to imports of this critical military mineral..

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VKA’s Linka has a historic production of a combined ~123,000t at 0.54% tungsten grades.

Linka produced tungsten between 1955 and 1956 from an open pit mine - since then the project has been largely untouched…

Today, VKA released samples grading as high as 14.7% tungsten and channel samples ~4.4m long with grades up to 0.6%.

Considering average tungsten grades for producing projects can be as low as ~0.2%, VKA’s project keeps returning fairly strong results from sampling.

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Here is a picture from above of the old Linka workings:

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The Linka project hasn’t really been explored with modern exploration methods, we expect to see a fair bit of newsflow from VKA as it digitises the old exploration records on the project.

What do we want to see VKA do next?

🔄Complete the acquisition of the new tungsten assets.

Next, we want to see VKA complete the acquisition of its six tungsten assets in the US.

VKA set the notice of meeting to have the deal approved for 12th of February, so we should see that news soon.

🔄Early metwork testing

VKA recently sent off a bulk sample to test its viability for processing.

In particular there is a focus on exploring the viability for this to be used in an early production opportunity scenario, with results from this expected in February. (source)

🔄 Target generation work (mapping/sampling)

We want to see VKA digitise the historical drilling and previous sampling data on the project.

Then we want to see all of that data get integrated into a modern 3D model.

We also want to see the project mapped with LiDAR to reveal the full extent of the underground workings on the project.

Milestones:

🔄 Mapping and sampling (soils and rock chips)

🔄 Geophysics/LiDAR (geophysics announced recently) (source)

🔲 Drill targets confirmed