David Southam-led Cygnus Metals has a bit going on, with a recent clay-hosted rare earths discovery in WA complementing its lithium prospects in the James Bay region of Canada.
Cygnus announced on Wednesday that drilling at its Bencubbin project had intersected significant high-grade rare earths mineralisation across 2.3km of strike.
This included intersections of 19m at 1541 parts per million (ppm) total rare earth oxide (TREO), including 11m at 1960ppm TREO and 4m at 2356ppm TREO. Another drill hole intersected 25m at 1117ppm TREO, including 9m at 1608ppm TREO.
Cygnus said that up to 28 per cent of mineralisation was of magnetic rare earth oxide (MREO), a high-value product that includes rare earths such as neodymium-praseodymium (NdPr), dysprosium and terbium.
Mineralisation is hosted in a 49m-wide ionic clay zone, which Cygnus suggests has the potential to support significant scale.
“This is a highly promising discovery of the most valuable clay-hosted rare earths mineralisation,” Cygnus managing director David Southam said. “While it is early days, the potential in terms of the value of the mineralisation and the scale is undoubtedly significant.
“We already have assays pending on another 28 holes and the mineralisation is open along strike. While we await these assays, we are working on a follow-up plan to unlock and understand the potential value of this discovery.”
Until now, Cygnus’ flagship asset has been its Pontax lithium project in the James Bay region of Canada, with only a small exploration team working away at Bencubbin.
With a maiden Pontax resource set to be delivered in late July or early August, Cygnus has been aggressively drilling the project, with the company’s best result to date achieved in April.
Cygnus intersected 23.4m at 1.4 per cent lithium oxide from 367.8m at Pontax, including 11.8m at 1.9 per cent lithium oxide and 2.9m at 2.3 per cent lithium oxide. This formed part of a 11,328m drill program.
The company is also exploring its Auclair lithium project in the James Bay region, where 67 spodumene-bearing pegmatites were recently identified as potential drill targets.
Drilling is set to commence at Auclair in July.
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