Mount Ridley Engaged in Rare Earth Exploration

Mount Ridley, a company targeting demand-driven metals in Western Australia, is advancing the exploration of its eponymous project after testing and confirming that rare earth minerals are easy to dissolve. Re-evaluation of 489 composite samples taken from 215 boreholes using aqua regia solution found that under the conditions of the experiment, about 800 parts/million of total rare earth oxides were incorporated into the solution.

The solution recovered approximately 80% of mild REO, 76% of severe REO, and 80% of critical REO. For Mount Ridley Mines, it is important that this result supports its belief that its project near Esperance in Western Australia may carry ion-adsorbed clay-supported REE mines in the Eocene sediments of Salmon Gums Plains change.

IAC-type mineralization is rarely found outside of China, and is considered to be some of the cheapest and most accessible sources of heavy rare earths. In addition, the drill hole returning to the high concentration of rare earths extends to an area of 25 kilometers long and 3 kilometers wide, which indicates that there is still a large amount of mineralization to be excavated.

Chairman Peter Christie said: "This analysis project aims to show early whether the REE mineralization is in a soluble state. Although these results are indicative, they exceed our expectations. Therefore, the company is encouraged to fully commit to drilling and more advanced Metallurgical research to advance the development of the REE project.

Mount Ridley pointed out that the results of the AR digestion test showed that a large part of the REE in the project can be extracted with a weak acid solution. Further testing will be designed to use new drilling samples to determine whether REE can be extracted by the salt solution under weakly acidic conditions.

This is the characteristic of the classic IAC-type deposit, which is leached and treated with a weakly acidic salt solution. An extensive hollow core drilling program is being planned, which includes re-drilling some of the holes that end in rare earth mineralization; expanding the scope of drilling where the mineralization is still open; conducting exploratory drilling to test other regional targets; and core drilling to provide The complete core is used for magma research, geotechnical engineering and metallurgical testing, and to test the quality of some of the previously drilled hollow holes with obvious mineralization.

Mount Ridley's two core projects are the recently acquired Weld Range West iron ore project located in the iron ore area of Midwest Western Australia and nickel, copper and PGE project located in the Fraser Mountains of Western Australia.

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