Appia Rare Earths & Uranium Corp. (CSE:API, OTCQB:APAAF) has announced the release of geochemical assay results from the 2022 diamond drilling of the Magnet Ridge Zone on its 100%-owned Alces Lake Rare Earth Elements (REES) property in Northern Saskatchewan.
Reporting the second set of results, the company noted that final assays for the 2022 Alces Lake diamond drilling program have been received, compiled, and interpreted zone-by-zone. Further results will follow once all the results are finalized, it added.
Included in the results, Appia said it drilled 6.08 metres (m) of 0.305 weight percent (wt%) total rare earth oxides (TREO) within a wide zone of 26.07m grading 0.246 wt% TREO at the Magnet Ridge Zone.
READ: Appia Rare Earths & Uranium adds new mineral claims at Alces Lake project in Saskatchewan
"The company is excited that our very first drilling program at Magnet Ridge yielded these highly anomalous results,” Appia vice president of exploration Irvine Annesley said in a statement. “Like the WRCB area's AMP zone, the mineralization style/type at Magnet Ridge opens new potential for large-volume, high-tonnage REE deposits over significant strike-length at Alces Lake.”
Highlights from the Magnet Ridge drilling program include:
- Drilling intersected thick sequences of (rare earth elements) REES from surface to 85 meters (m) depth, with drilled widths up to 28.19m;
- The discovered mineralization intervals are similar in nature and larger in size when compared to the AMP Zone at WRCB;
- Total rare earths oxide (TREO) assays of up to 0.65 wt% (6,500 parts per million) TREO were returned, with thickness and grades increasing by more than 50% to the south-southeast; all within 85m of surface;
- 19.85m at 0.317 wt% TREO including 8.94m at 0.467 wt% TREO in hole 22-AUG-031;
- 18.67m at 0.245 wt% TREO including 9.02m at 0.344 wt% TREO in hole 22-AUG-030;
- 26.70m at 0.246 wt% TREO including 6.08m at 0.305 wt% TREO in hole 22-AUG-013;
- 28.19m at 0.190 wt% TREO including 3.07m at 0.506 wt% TREO in hole 22-AUG-026; and
- Follow-up drilling is warranted.
The company noted that in 2022 it drilled the Magnet Ridge (formally Augier) prospect, located south-southeast (SSE) of WRCB for the first time and intersected REE mineralization in 27 of 34 the diamond drill holes near surface over significant strike length and drilled widths exceeding 28 metres.
Mineralization remains open for follow-up drilling
It explained that the Magnet Ridge zone was discovered from interpreted results of a 2021 airborne radiometric (U-Th-K) survey, and is exposed on surface as a large 500m long and 150m wide zone of thorium enrichment along the same km-scale SSE-trending structural corridor hosting the monazite-rich REE zones of the WRCB area. Mineralization at Magnet Ridge remains open to the SSE and to the north-northwest for follow-up drilling in 2023, the company added.
Appia noted that radiometric Thorium (Th) is an important proxy for delineating monazite mineralization at Alces Lake. A representative X-section suggests that the structural geometry of the mineralization is complex and probably folded, it added.
Comprehensive interpretation and modeling of the WRCB and Magnet Ridge mineralized zones have indicated that follow-up geophysical and geochemical surveys are necessary along and across the highest-priority areas of a major structural corridor that extends SSE from the main mineralized zones at WRCB to Magnet Ridge and then for another 20 to 25 kilometres, the company said. These surveys will facilitate delineation and mapping of REE mineralized (monazite-bearing) pegmatites and associated glimmerites within this structural corridor to establish new drill targets. The petrophysical characteristics of monazite will be maximized as a vectoring tool(s) for finding new targets, it added.
Appia said its Alces Lake project encompasses some of the highest-grade total and critical REEs and gallium mineralization in the world, hosted within several surface and near-surface monazite-bearing occurrences that remain open at depth and along strike.
Critical rare earth elements are defined here as those that are in short supply and high demand for use in permanent magnets and modern electronic applications such as electric vehicles and wind turbines, including neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium.
The Alces Lake project is located in northern Saskatchewan, the same provincial jurisdiction that is developing a ‘first-of-its-kind’ rare earth processing facility in Canada, currently under construction by the Saskatchewan Research Council and scheduled to become fully operational in early 2024. The project area is 38,522.43 contiguous hectares in size and is 100% owned by Appia.
Contact the author at stephen.gunnion@proactiveinvestors.com