I recently updated the TMR Advanced Rare-Earth Projects Index, to reflect project updates since the last edition. The effective date of the latest edition is April 2, 2015. The specifics:
- In November 2014, Mineração Serra Verde, a subsidiary of Mining Ventures Brasil, completed a pre-feasibility study for the Serra Verde project in Brazil, which included an upgraded NI 43-101-guided mineral-resource estimate. Per the company’s Web site, 7 Mt of the resource is at the Measured level @ 0.16% TREO, 381 Mt is at the Indicated level @ 0.16% TREO, and 521 Mt is at the Inferred level @ 0.016% TREO, each at a cut-off grade of 0.1% TREO;
- On December 17, 2014, AusAmerican Mining Limited (ASX:AIW), owners of the La Paz project in the USA, changed its name to AusROC Metals Ltd.(ASX:ARK);
- On January 22, 2015, IAMGold Corporation (NYSE:IAG) completed the sale of its Niobec niobium mine in Canada, and the associated adjacent REE deposit, to Magris Resources Inc., a private Canadian company.;
- On February 12, 2015, Greenland Minerals and Energy Ltd. (ASX:GGG) announced an updated JORC-guided mineral-resource estimate for the Kvanefjeld project in Greenland. According to the associated news release, 143 Mt of the resource is at the Measured level @ 1.21% TREO, 308 Mt is at the Indicated level @ 1.11% TREO, and 222 Mt is at the Inferred level @ 1.00% TREO, each at a cut-off grade of 0.015% U3O8. We await a response from the company on some details of the elemental breakdown, before we update the distribution and grade tables; and
- On February 23, 2015, Northern Minerals Limited (ASX:NTU) announced an updated JORC-guided mineral-resource estimate for the Browns Range project in Australia. According to the associated news release, 4.7 Mt of the resource is at the Indicated level @ 0.70% TREO and 4.3 Mt is at the Inferred level @ 0.56% TREO, each at a cut-off grade of 0.15% TREO.
The Index currently consists of 58 rare-earth mineral resources, associated with 53 advanced rare-earth projects and 49 companies, located in 34 regions within 16 countries.
I have also updated the pricing used in the Index data, to reflect the average monthly prices for March 2014, as reported by Metal Pages. You can access the updated details via the Index page.
One final note – the easy-to-remember shortcut for accessing the Index is www.RareEarths.org.
Disclosure: at the time of writing, Gareth Hatch holds no shares or stock options in any of the companies mentioned in this article, or in any publicly traded rare-earth company, nor is he doing paid consulting for any such company.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for your thorough and regular updates on activities in this most important area of mining.
As a long term holder of Alkane Resources And Newcrest, I find it provides details not covered in business news coverage
I share the view of Mr.David Edmonds/
Hi Gareth
Thank you for continuing to do this work, it certainly helps those of us out here. Could you please send the individual rare earth prices that you used in your analysis, they would be most helpful to me.
I got this info from a Geoanalysts in the field. “If you take the in situ grade of any individual rare earth for a given deposit and divide it by the TREO grade for that deposit, then you should get the percentage distribution of that rare earth within the deposit. As a concrete example, look at Aksu Diamas lanthanum oxide in situ grade of 0.018, divide by TREO in situ total grade of 0.070, and you get the relative distribution of lanthanum oxide in the deposit of about 25% (with some rounding error thrown in).” This is good info when trying to decide which company may be best to invest in based on quality and quantity of REE present.
I am not sure you can decide to invest with this info Mr Flynt because in general only carbonatite has lanthanum oxide / TREO ratio of 25 – 35%. Alkaline dykes have the same ratio around 15 -16%.
As per example Grevet REE Property, a grassroot property, on which a selected grab sample returns 20.41% TREO and with lanthanum oxide of 6.72% gives a ratio of 32.9%
FYI
AusAmerican/Ausroc has released all property holdings at it’s La Paz project. This may be verified by visiting BLM (North and La Paz claims) and Arizona Land Department (state prospecting permits/mineral leases) web sites.
Gareth, I note that your “basket price” from the TMR RE Index is still being quoted about the place in rather loose fashion, unqualified to recent events.
With the deletion of tariffs and given the current domestic pricing situation I’d question whether your current pricing models offer a realistic view of a project’s economics.
TMR Index is a great reference and understand you are no doubt busy on other projects but perhaps an update to Chinese domestic prices + 17% VAT might provide a more realistic baseline.