Drilling Confirms Further Rare Earth Element Mineralisation And Increased Potential At East Laverton

MTM Critical Metals Limited (ASX:MTM) (MTM or the Company) has received assay results from a recent program of aircore drilling completed to test rare earth element (REE) anomalies at the Pt Kidman prospect, part of the East Laverton Project in the north Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia (Figure 1).

Highlights:

• Drilling results confirm that the broad REE mineralisation at the Pt Kidman prospect extends far beyond previously known zones.
• Higher grade drilling intersections include:
  • 29m @ 1,667ppm TREO
  • 29m @ 2,116ppm TREO
  • 12m @ 2,564ppm TREO
  • 11m @ 2,753ppm TREO
  • 4m @ 3,400ppm TREO inc. 1m @ 8,752ppm TREO
• Mineralised envelopes with drill intercepts exceeding 1,000ppm TREO now identified over approximately 12km2
• Mineralisation contains a significant proportion of valuable heavy, magnet and critical rare earth oxides over thick intervals up to 29m, including:
  • High value Nd+Pr oxides represent an average of 19.5% of TREO grade
  • High value magnet rare earth oxides represent an average 24.4% of TREO grade
  • Critical rare earth oxides (CREO) average 21.7% of TREO grade
  • Heavy rare earth oxides represent an average of 11.4% of TREO grade
• Drilling confirms continuity of clay-hosted mineralisation over large areas
• Large areas still remain untested and are interpreted to be prospective for similar mineralisation occurrences
• Preliminary metallurgical testwork and mineralisation characterisation to be undertaken

Figure 1: Location Map of Prospects at the East Laverton Project

The Company has previously reported assay results for drilling at Pt Kidman (see MTM ASX announcement dated 18 August 2022 and 17 November 2022) which highlighted broad zones of shallow, flat-laying clay-hosted REE mineralisation.

Regarding the latest results from the Pt Kidman prospect, Managing Director Lachlan Reynolds commented:

“These latest drilling results have greatly extended the known zone of clay-hosted rare earth element mineralisation in the northern part of the East Laverton project. The drilling intersections validate the positive soil geochemical anomalies we had already defined and confirm that we are dealing with a highly prospective area.

As we had previously seen in aircore drilling, the rare earth elements occur in a very broad, shallow and continuous zone of shallow mineralisation, in some cases from surface. The presence of thick zones of higher-grade mineralisation, up to 30 metres, gives us great encouragement that the Pt Kidman prospect area has the potential to contain a resource with a significant proportion of high value NdPr and critical rare earth oxides.

Our exploration team is keen to extend the soil sampling coverage within our tenements and we fully expect to define further areas for drill testing. We are also planning to complete preliminary metallurgical test work on the drilling samples to understand the nature and potential processing options for the mineralisation.

More drilling is also required to home-in on the best parts of the system and our objective is to make a new rare earth deposit discovery.”

The Pt Kidman area has been confirmed as a large-scale, rare earth element opportunity at East Laverton. The current drilling program extends the known part of the prospective terrane and has shown significant continuity and grade within the mineralised zone within the regolith.

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