Lion Rock Minerals (ASX:LRM) has reported monazite intercepts from the first 69 holes of a 761-hole drilling campaign at its Minta Est Project in Cameroon.
Individual results reached 1.94% total rare earth oxide (TREO), with calculated monazite up to 3.62% of recovered heavy mineral concentrate (HMC).
About 40% of assayed holes returned intervals of 1% calculated monazite or more.
‘Standout’ intercepts include 2m @ 8.06% total heavy minerals (THM) with 0.72% TREO from 4m in ME0119, and 4m @ 7.07% THM from 3m in ME0123. Hole ME0111 returned 2m @ 4.51% THM with 0.74% TREO from 5m.
Of the 69 holes, 30 returned THM grades above 5%.
Magnetic separation tests concentrated 75.6% and 84.1% of calculated TREO into middlings comprising 15.38% and 26.61% of recovered HMC mass respectively.
Composite samples consistently returned about 24% neodymium-praseodymium (NdPr) and 1% dysprosium-terbium (DyTb) of TREO.
The results cover about 9% of the completed campaign, which spans roughly 50km and generated 3,666 samples. Nearly half the holes with significant monazite intervals ended in mineralisation due to depth limits of hand and auger drilling.
CEO Theuns de Bruyn says the results confirm a ‘substantially larger mineral system’ with shallow heavy-mineral zones repeated across several holes.
“Today’s HMC results are conservative as they only relate to the [greater than 45 micron] and [less than 1mm] fraction, which is, therefore, likely to under-report the in-situ monazite content,” de Bruyn notes.
Lion Rock Minerals plans to mobilise drill rigs next year to penetrate saprolite layers and reach the monazite-enriched granite. Results from the remaining 692 holes will be announced over coming weeks.
Write to JC Villarba at Mining.com.au
Images: Lion Rock Minerals
