American Rare Earths boosts magnetic attraction

American Rare Earths is a step closer to achieving its vision of being a leading producer of the critical minerals for the US market after receiving encouraging preliminary data from the maiden exploration drill program at Halleck Creek.

So far, high-grade XRF observations have ranged from more than 3,000ppm (parts per million) to a very significant 20,000ppm, with consistent rare earth element (REE) enrichment to at least 100m.

American Rare Earths (ASX:ARR) has now drilled 917m and collected 822 samples from nine holes in the Red Mountain Pluton area, with core recovery from most holes above 99%. The core samples have sent to American Assay Labs for analysis, with full results expected in June or July.

The Australian-based company’s newly expanded Wyoming project has an exploration target estimated at 308 to 385 million tonnes of rare earth oxide (REO) mineralised ore, with high grades from 2,330 to 2,912 ppm total rare earth oxide (TREO).

Significantly, the site contains high value magnet rare earth elements neodymium and praseodymium (NdPr), as well as dysprosium and terbium, which are in red hot demand for the permanent magnets used in electric vehicles, wind turbines and other green energy technology.

However the full suite of REEs, used in a long shopping list of products from electronic devices to fighter jets, are found at Halleck Creek in a group of minerals called allanite.

Even more encouraging is that the Halleck Creek allanite is associated with clinopyroxene quartz monzonite (CQM) rocks, which generally contain the highest REE grades.