Barkly scores near-perfect drill hit rate at huge NT rare earths play
Brought to you by BULLS N’ BEARS
Murray Ward
Barkly Rare Earths has delivered another volley of high-grade rare earth intercepts from its namesake Northern Territory project, confirming shallow mineralisation across a staggering 23-kilometre expanse.
The latest batch of 16 assayed holes returned 15 significant intercepts. Highlights include a three-metre hit grading 1578 parts per million (ppm) total rare earth oxides (TREO) from just 10.5m, featuring a higher-grade 0.5-metre core of 5156ppm TREO. Another hole returned 1.5m running 2869ppm TREO from 16.5m, including a richer 0.5-metre section running 4211ppm TREO. Deleterious uranium and thorium also remained at consistently low levels.
The company’s 10,000-metre phase one resource expansion drill campaign has now delivered a remarkable strike rate, with 43 of the 44 holes reported so far returning significant rare earth intercepts. Better still, 30 holes contained high-grade 0.5m intervals topping 2500ppm TREO, highlighting a remarkably consistent high-grade component across the sprawling system.
The latest results have built on an already stellar debut from the company’s first assays, which struck mineralisation in all 28 holes, showing the early success was no flash in the pan. Follow-up assays from those first holes reported just two weeks ago have only strengthened the picture further, widening the known mineralisation in 11 of those 28 intercepts.
“All but one of forty-four holes now reported have intersected the rare earth rich mineralised horizon.′
Barkly Rare Earths managing director Craig Wright
Importantly, magnet rare earth oxides (MREO) represent 29-39 per cent of the TREO in 42 out of 45 intercepts, which is consistent with the 34 per cent MREO ratio of the existing inferred mineral resource. MREO include yttrium, neodymium, praseodymium, terbium and dysprosium, some of the most sought-after of the 17 rare earth elements. They are essential for manufacturing high-strength permanent magnets used in electric vehicles and wind turbines.
The current 40-million-tonne inferred mineral resource is split between the northern and southern deposits, leaving almost 15km of virtually untouched ground in between for the drill bit to explore. That sizeable gap helps explain Barkly’s lofty exploration target of between 200 million and one billion tonnes at a grade of between 1600ppm and 1900ppm TREO. The deposit is shallow and flat-lying, which could improve project economics by enabling a simple mining process.
Sharpening the project’s potential economic edge, the company recently announced a stunning 99 per cent extraction of high-value magnet rare earths from a simple single-stage metallurgical test. The result was achieved using a caustic conversion and acid leach sighter test, a major technical win that could point to simplified and lower-cost processing.
Barkly Rare Earths managing director Craig Wright said: “All but one of the forty-four holes now reported have intersected the rare earths-rich mineralised horizon, and through early follow-up assays we have seen increased widths to the intercepts we reported last month. We are seeing the enormous scale of the Barkly Project emerge, high MREO ratios — the rare earth elements that matter — and shallow, flat-lying mineralisation with negligible uranium and thorium contaminants.”
The company, which only listed on the ASX in January after an oversubscribed A$8 million IPO, is aggressively targeting a massive expansion of its existing resource. The broader rare earths market is still being shaped by China’s supply-chain leverage, prompting Western governments to push for stockpiles and fund new projects to secure their own sources of the critical minerals. This strategic imperative has put the spotlight on magnet-heavy projects.
The renewed M&A appetite for non-China rare earth supply was recently underscored when major producer Lynas Rare Earths agreed to acquire Meteoric Resources’ ionic-clay project in Brazil for A$968M, signalling that established players are willing to pay up for quality assets, especially those with simpler, low-cost, ambient-temperature leachable deposits – a trend that could benefit emerging developers such as Barkly.
The company has drilled 71 holes for 1667m so far as part of its huge campaign. With results from another 16 holes expected in the coming weeks and more than 300 holes still to be drilled, a steady stream of news is expected for the remainder of the year. To speed things up, Barkly is now tendering for a second drill rig.
With a near-perfect hit rate from its maiden drill campaign, a massive 15km exploration gap to fill and metallurgical tests already pointing to simple, high-recovery processing, Barkly is rapidly ticking all the boxes for a major rare earths discovery. The market has backed it from the get-go and, with the West desperate for new sources of magnet metals, the question is no longer if Barkly can grow its resource, but just how big it can get.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: mattbirney@bullsnbears.com.au
