Altona Rare Earths’ shares jumped 25% to 2.5p after the company reported a series of encouraging discoveries at its Monte Muambe project in Mozambique, including three new fluorspar targets and high-grade gallium mineralisation.
The AIM-listed explorer said soil sampling and drilling have revealed a strong concentration of fluorine, with 38% of 231 assays showing levels above 5,000 parts per million, equivalent to more than 10% fluorspar content.
The findings led to the identification of three new targets, named Jambire, Jambire Mn and Kudu, where surface mapping has confirmed visible fluorspar outcrops.
Around 45% of diamond drilling cores extracted so far have shown visible fluorspar, supporting expectations that the project could host significant mineralisation.
Altona said it is expanding its 2025 drilling programme to include these new areas, while also increasing activity at the Python target, where gallium grades have reached as high as 1,154 grams per tonne.
Chief executive Cédric Simonet said the results demonstrate strong progress in expanding the project’s resource base. “The discovery and ground-truthing of three new fluorspar targets highlight the potential scale of Monte Muambe,” he said.
The company is also collaborating with the University of Exeter on research into gallium distribution within fluorspar ore, which will guide future metallurgical studies on recovery methods.
Fluorspar and gallium are increasingly important industrial materials, fluorspar in steelmaking and battery production, and gallium in semiconductors and advanced electronics, placing Altona’s latest results firmly within the global push to secure critical raw materials.
Further assay and metallurgical testing results are expected once the next batch of samples is processed in South Africa.