Avalon Rare Metals Starts Work Program at East Kemptville Project

Avalon Rare Metals Inc. (TSX:AVL,NYSEMKT:AVL) announced that it’s started a $1.3-million work program at its Nova Scotia-based East Kemptville tin-indium project.

As quoted in the press release:

The program will involve 2,000 metres of diamond drilling, metallurgical process testwork and preliminary environmental studies. This work will generate the data required to complete a Preliminary Economic Assessment (“PEA”) by November, 2015. Drilling is scheduled to commence in early July and be completed in September with initial results expected in late August. The drilling program will increase confidence in mineral resources in both the Main and Baby Zones, collect fresh sample material for bench-scale metallurgical process testwork and test two exploration targets (Duck Pond and South Grid) where there are encouraging results from historical drilling.

Primary objectives of the drill program include:

• Detailed drilling of the Baby Zone to bring Inferred Resources to the Indicated level of confidence, test potential depth extensions and map the detailed mineralogy of the zone with a focus on possible enrichment in other rare metals such as germanium and lithium. The Baby Zone is the highest grade known tin zone on the property. The 2014 drilling program yielded assays of up to 0.41% Sn, 0.53% Zn and 16.77 ppm In over 67.85 metres in the Baby Zone.

• Limited drilling on the Main Zone, largely to collect sample material for mineralogical and metallurgical purposes, but also to test the zone to depth and increase Indicated Resources.

• Exploratory drilling at the Duck Pond and South Grid zones. These two known tin zones were drilled at the time of original development of the mine in the 1980s, but saw no subsequent exploration. The Duck Pond zone was tested in the past by more than 20 drill holes, returning intersections assaying up to 0.17% Sn over 42.7 metres. The results are sufficiently encouraging to suggest that there is potential to develop further mineral resources at Duck Pond. The South Grid zone is an area along trend southwest of the Baby Zone where limited widely spaced drilling has produced intersections of up to 0.31% Sn over 33.0 metres.

Don Bubar, president and CEO of Avalon, commented:

I am delighted with the significant progress we have made on the East Kemptville Tin-Indium Project over the past year. This summer’s work program will allow us tocomplete a preliminary economic assessment by the end of 2015 and move us one step closer to realizing our goal of re-establishing Nova Scotia as the Tin Capital of North America.

Click here to read the full Avalon Rare Metals Inc. (TSX:AVL,NYSEMKT:AVL) press release.