Horizon Minerals Ltd (ASX:HRZ) is set to add rare earths and scandium to the golden bounty at its suite of projects near Kalgoorlie-Boulder in the heart of the Western Australian Goldfields following a regional aircore drilling program.
The 123-hole program at the 100%-owned Cannon and Golden Ridge project areas was conducted by Metalhawk Ltd, which has the nickel rights over a number of Horizon’s tenements.
Under a rights agreement, Metalhawk also assays for other elements on behalf of Horizon.
Shallow, clay-hosted rare earths
As well as the nickel suite of elements, Metalhawk routinely assayed 5-metre composite samples for a multi-element package that included rare earth elements cerium and lanthanum with this data made available to Horizon.
From this eight holes with anomalous levels of cerium and lanthanum were selected for resampling as single metre intervals with these tested for the complete rare earth element (REE) suite, in addition to scandium, yttrium and lanthanum.
This work returned positive shallow, clay-hosted rare earth results, including the higher value magnet rare earths of praseodymium, neodymium, samarium, terbium and dysprosium to the south of the Cannon gold deposit.
Scandium to boot
Separately, anomalous levels of scandium were highlighted at Snake Hill near Golden Ridge deposit with the maximum single metre scandium assay being 445 g/t from 32 metres.
Horizon managing director Jon Price said: “It’s encouraging to see this new REE and scandium mineralisation discovered so close to Kalgoorlie.
“As rare earth prices steadily improve, we have noted there has been a substantial increase amongst explorers discovering clay-hosted rare earths in Western Australia over the last 12 months.
"Although our primary focus has, and remains, on building resources and developing near-term gold mines at Cannon and Pennys Find, this is a relatively easy opportunity.
“We can potentially add REOs and scandium to Horizon’s expanding multi-commodity interests by initially collecting some of the drill samples and submitting them to a laboratory for sighter metallurgical recovery work for both the REE and scandium. We will then assess the potential economics.”
As well as gold, the company’s multi-commodity interests include silver, zinc, nickel, platinum, palladium and lithium.
Horizon’s project area location, resources and surrounding infrastructure.
Regional aircore program
In 2022 Metalhawk completed a regional 123-hole, aircore program about 25 kilometres southeast of Kalgoorlie, close to the Golden Ridge and Cannon deposits.
This focused on discovering new nickel mineralisation where Metalhawk has nickel rights over a number of Horizon tenements.
Cannon is within Horizon’s Bulong South Gold Project 30 kilometres east-southeast of Kalgoorlie in the Eastern Goldfields, on granted mining lease M25/333.
The Golden Ridge area is largely associated with the north-south trending, sub-vertical quartz-feldspar porphyry located between ultramafic, shales and cherts to the west and an ultramafic (talc-carbonate) sequences to the east.
The REE mineralisation is hosted within ultramafic, saprolitic clays around 30 metres deep and is open in all directions. No REE exploration has previously been completed in the area.
What comes next?
Horizon’s focus remains on obtaining all the permitting and approvals necessary to bring the high-grade Cannon underground gold mine into production later this year.
A preliminary review of REEs in general has identified that one of the main issues of developing a low-grade clay-hosted REE is the cost of extraction and concentrate recovery.
If this cost can be achieved efficiently, the project economics would be enhanced.
Horizon will submit drill samples for metallurgical testing, including beneficiation and processing pathways (eg 'ammonium sulphate process').
Should results be encouraging, a scoping study based on a conceptual resource model for the REE and scandium will be undertaken.