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Significant high-tenor Rare Earth Element (REE) results have been returned from recent soil geochemistry surveys at Impact Minerals Limited’s (ASX:IPT) 100% owned Arkun Project located 150 km east of Perth in the emerging mineral province of southwest Western Australia (Figure 1).
- Rare Earth Element anomalism of up to 5,880 ppm (0.59%) Total Rare Earth Oxide (TREO+Y) and Nd+Pr of up to 21% has been returned from soil sampling at the Arkun Project.
- The anomaly covers at least a 3 km2 area at greater than 1,000ppm TREO and is open along strike to the northwest and southeast.
- The soil anomaly is developed in weathered granite and is a prime target for a large clay-hosted REE deposit. The granite covers a further area of about 170 km2 which has yet to be explored.
- Another new prospect, Swordfish, and the previously identified Horseshoe prospect attest to the significant prospectivity for REE mineralisation across the Arkun project.
- Early drilling and bulk sampling for metallurgical test work is planned for the next two Quarters.
Very significant assays of up to 5,880 parts per million (ppm) Total Rare Earth Element Oxides and Yttrium (TREO +Y) have been returned from the newly identified Hyperion prospect in the northwestern part of the project area (Figure 2). These are some of the highest TREO-in-soil results reported recently in Western Australia. A further anomaly with up to 1,783 ppm TREO+Y has also been identified at Swordfish. 10 km southeast of Hyperion (Figure 2).
These new anomalies add to the previously reported significant and large, 10 km long REE anomaly at the Horseshoe Prospect located 25 km east of Hyperion (Figure 2) and emphasise the significant exploration potential for REE at the Arkun project (ASX Release 1st June 2023).
Impact Minerals’ Managing Director, Dr Mike Jones, said, “The discovery of the Hyperion Prospect is a significant breakthrough in exploring the Arkun Project, which has so far focused on nickel, platinum, and copper. Impact's exploration strategy recognises that the Corrigin Tectonic Zone has potential for various commodities, including Rare Earth Elements (REEs), and the Hyperion Prospect could host a large REE deposit in the clays developed in weathered granite. However, the key to an economic discovery is to evaluate how easily the REEs can be extracted through simple acid leaching. For this purpose, initial drill testing and bulk sampling for metallurgical test work will be conducted in the upcoming field season. The extraction characteristics will help guide resource definition drilling later in the year”.
Figure 1. Location and regional geological setting of Impact’s Arkun and other projects in the emerging mineral province of southwest Western Australia. Significant nickel deposits are shown in orange, lithium deposits in green and gold deposits in yellow.
Figure 2. Location and interpreted bedrock geology of the Hyperion, Swordfish and Horseshoe Rare Earth Prospects within the Arkun Project. Soil geochemistry surveys are shown in orange and red.
Hyperion Prospect
The soil geochemistry results have defined an area of more than 3 km2 at greater than 1,000 ppm TREO+Y at Hyperion (Figure 3). Five samples returned greater than 2,500 ppm TREO+Y with a peak value of 5,880 ppm (0.58%) TREO+Y, amongst some of the highest tenor REE soil values reported in Western Australia. A selection of assays containing more than 1,000 ppm TREO is given in Appendix 1.
Within the anomaly, two broad northwest-southeast trending zones of more than 1,500 ppm TREO+Y-in- soils extend for 2.5 km along-trend and are open in both directions (Figure 3).
The anomaly has an average neodymium plus Praesedynium percentage of about 20%, typical of most regolith-hosted mineralisation in the region with Heavy REE contents of between 54 ppm and 200 ppm within the >1,000 ppm parts of the anomaly (Appendix 1). This is encouraging for discovering the more economically compelling Heavy Rare Earths close to the surface.
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This article includes content from Impact Minerals, licensed for the purpose of publishing on Investing News Australia. This article does not constitute financial product advice. It is your responsibility to perform proper due diligence before acting upon any information provided here. Please refer to our full disclaimer here.
IPT:AU
Impact Minerals Limited
Investor Insight
With a mining lease application underway and a scoping study that shows excellent economics, Impact Minerals’ game-changing, advanced Lake Hope high-purity alumina project makes for a compelling investment case.
Overview
Impact Minerals (ASX:IPT) is an exploration and development mining company focused on discovering and developing new resource projects within Australia. Lake Hope, a transformational acquisition by the company and its current flagship asset, is a high-purity alumina (HPA) project in Impact’s home territory of Western Australia, a tier-one jurisdiction.
This advanced-stage project allows the company to fast-track the asset toward development, firmly establishing the company on the road to production and increasing shareholder value.
HPA is a high-value product with various uses in several industries that are key to the transition to a low-carbon world. It is mainly used in LED lighting, micro-LED screens, and ceramic-coated separators in lithium-ion batteries. Both these markets are forecast to grow dramatically over the next decade, and a looming supply shortage is predicted for 2026.
HPA is also necessary for producing synthetic sapphire and scratch-resistant glass. With these ever-widening applications for HPA, demand for this resource is expected to grow from US$3.18 billion to US$12.21 billion by 2030 with a compounded annual growth rate of about 20 percent.
Lake Hope is the company’s current focus as it moves towards production, and where a very shallow, high-grade resource of HPA precursor material has been identified in the top two meters of a dry salt lake. The deposit has unique physical and chemical properties that will allow for inexpensive digging and mining, with transportation to a processing facility off-site in an established industrial area. This will accelerate the approvals processes required to get into production.
With a mining lease application pending, Impact aims to bring Lake Hope, which contains almost 1 million tons of potential HPA, into production when the forecast average price for 4N HPA (99.99 percent Al2O3) and related products is about US$20,000 per ton. The ‘4N’ designation indicates the purity grade, making it suitable for high-tech end uses.
Outstanding economics from the latest scoping study released by the company shows Lake Hope’s potential to be the lowest-cost producer of HPA globally by up to 50 percent.
Lake Hope has a maiden mineral resource estimate (MRE) of 3.5 million tons at 25.1 percent alumina (Al2O3) for a contained 880,000 tons of alumina. The company also received heritage clearances for the entire Lake Hope deposit further de-risking the project and providing another critical component in the company’s application for a mining lease.
Impact completed a bulk sampling and test pits program at the Lake Hope project in December 2023, and later reached a key milestone by producing HPA greater than 99.99 percent (4N) purity from the metallurgical processing of lake clays acquired from Lake Hope.
In February 2024, a new proprietary metallurgical process for producing HPA from the lake clays was identified. Impact produced 99.99 percent (4N) Al2O3 from a low-temperature leach (LTL) process. The LTL process may lower the capital and operating costs to produce HPA compared to the sulphate process which underpinned the recent scoping study. The LTL process will be included in the ongoing pre-feasibility study in parallel with the sulphate process at marginal extra cost to determine the best processing route to HPA. The PFS is due to be completed in late 2024.
A comparison of the LTL process and the sulphate process
The company is well funded to finance the pre-feasibility study at the Lake Hope High Purity Alumina project and exploration activities at the Arkun battery minerals project.
Impact Minerals has been awarded a $2.87 million grant for the commercialisation of its innovative process to produce High Purity Alumina (HPA) from the Lake Hope deposit. The grant is under the Federal Government’s Cooperative Research Centres Projects (CRC-P) program which fosters short-term, industry-led research collaborations. The grant is part of an estimated $6.4 million research and development project to be completed within three years and designed to provide Impact with the relevant information required to complete a definitive feasibility. A key component of the grant funding will be to construct a pilot plant, which is a key goal for 2025, and this will provide consistent material for off-take and qualification trials.
Impact Minerals was also one of the inaugural cohort of seven companies selected to be part of the prestigious BHP Xplor program. BHP Xplor, an accelerator program introduced by BHP in August 2022, is designed to help provide participants with the opportunity to accelerate their growth and the potential to establish a long-term partnership with BHP and its global network of partners.
The BHP Xplor funding was used to identify new target areas for copper and other energy metals around the Broken Hill area in New South Wales, eastern Australia, where Impact has been quietly adding to its ground position for several years.
Additionally, the company is exploring its large Arkun battery metals project, also in Western Australia which covers nearly 2,900 square kilometres. Three new exploration licence applications were submitted recently immediately north of the Arkun project along trend from the recently discovered REE soil geochemistry anomalies at Hyperion, Swordfish and Horseshoe, and the Caligula copper anomaly. These anomalies require drill testing which will occur in 2024 and is an exciting development in the emerging mineral province of southwest WA.
A strong management team with over 50 years of combined industry experience leads the company. With a mining and exploration geology degree, Dr. Mike Jones, managing director, launched a long career consulting and leading mining organizations. Peter Unsworth, the non-executive chairman, has more than 35 years of experience in multiple financial sectors, such as securities industries and wealth management. Paul Ingram, a non-executive director, has led several mining companies since 2003. Impact Minerals has the experience and expertise to lead the company to success.
Company Highlights
- Impact Minerals is an exploration and development mining company focused on rapidly moving its flagship Lake Hope high-purity alumina (HPA) project toward production.
- The Lake Hope project has a high-grade maiden mineral resource estimate (MRE) of 3.5 million tonnes at 25.1 percent alumina (Al2O3), for a contained 880,000 tonnes of alumina that can be converted to HPA.
- HPA is used throughout multiple industries, and the overall HPA market is projected to grow by a CAGR of 18.4 percent by 2030.
- A pre-feasibility study is currently in progress and scheduled to be completed by Q4 2024. A mining lease application for the Lake Hope High Purity Alumina (HPA) was recently lodged with the aim of being granted by 2026.
- The company’s project portfolio also includes assets with high-grade mineral deposits of a range of base, critical and precious metals.
- Impact Mineral’s 2,000-square-mile Arkun nickel-copper-PGE project in Western Australia has produced encouraging assays that motivate further exploration. Maiden drill programmes are planned for early 2025.
- The company is also exploring its Broken Hill copper project in New South Wales following a major grant under the auspices of the BHP Xplor program in 2023..
- A strong management team leads the company with experience in geology, mining and corporate finance.
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Developing the lowest-cost HPA project in Australia
High-Grade Gold Confirmed at Bronzewing South
- Partial results received from the diamond tail of drill-hole BWSRC081 with the visible gold zone returning 15.5g/t Au over 0.48m from 416.5m. This high- grade zone is reported within a broader intercept of:
- 8.95m at 1.32g/t Au from 414m, including:
- 0.48m at 15.5g/t Au from 416.5m; and
- 0.55m at 3.52g/t Au from 422.4m.
- 8.95m at 1.32g/t Au from 414m, including:
- Follow-up drilling along strike from these intercepts is scheduled to commence in the coming days to define the extent of the south-trending zone of gold mineralisation with a diamond tail of drill-hole BWSRCD086.
- Drill results indicate the inadequacy of historical air-core drill testing with a significant search space now open on the boundary with the historical Bronzewing Mining Lease.
- Diamond drilling at the Central Target, located ~1.7km to the south of the Eastern Target and within the same structural corridor, has encountered zones of intense locally massive quartz veining associated with brecciation below historical Hammer gold drilling anomalies of:
- 20m at 1.5g/t Au from 120m in drill-hole BWSRC0037, including:
- 8m at 2.4g/t Au from 120m; and
- 4m at 3.9g/t Au from 120m.1
- 20m at 1.5g/t Au from 120m in drill-hole BWSRC0037, including:
- Assay results from the remaining program will be progressively released in the coming weeks.
Figure 1. Photo of massive quartz carbonate veining intersected in drill-hole BWSRCD082 diamond tail at Hammer’s Central Target Zone (213m to 221.5m).
Hammer’s Managing Director, Daniel Thomas, said:
“The confirmation of high-grade gold mineralisation at Bronzewing South is a significant step in our search for an economically viable gold target at our Yandal Gold Project. High-grade mineralisation can be traced with multiple intercepts to the north of our project area, with the mineralised structure interpreted to extend for hundreds of metres.
“We will now look to test this structure approximately 100m further south on our project area. We are very much looking forward to follow-up drilling at the Eastern Target, as we enter a zone without any previous drilling coverage.
“The team is encouraged by the observations in recent drilling at the Central Target and the potential for this corridor to be connected to the Eastern Target drilling some 1.7km to the north. This corridor is largely untested below the ineffectual air-core drilling and, with a prominent shear zone interpreted to connect these targets, it is of high interest to the team in our search for a significant gold discovery.”
Figure 2. Plan view of the Bronzewing South tenement EPM36/854, showing Bronzewing orebodies on Northern Star Resources mining lease, historical Hammer RC drilling intercepts and the structural corridor of interest containing Hammer’s Central and Eastern Target Zones (refer to ASX announcement 9 November 2020).
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This article includes content from Hammer Metals, licensed for the purpose of publishing on Investing News Australia. This article does not constitute financial product advice. It is your responsibility to perform proper due diligence before acting upon any information provided here. Please refer to our full disclaimer here.
