From the Australian- METEORIC RESOURCES (ASX:MEI)Meteoric Resource sold its Juruena gold project in Brazil for an impressive staged deal recouping up to $US22 million ($30m), leaving the explorer with plenty of cash to walk in the door to reinvest in drilling.It wasted little time, tapping into local networks to acquire the “Tier-1” Caldeira mine, where clays have been extracted for 112 years in the mining state (literally) of Minas Gerais.Owned by a family company, the project has previously been dug up for clays used in bricks and roof tiles, as well as refractory products for use in furnaces and kilns in steel, aluminium, non-ferrous metals, industrial minerals, glass and ceramics.Under Meteoric it will be reinvented as a rare earths project, with shallow auger drilling of six of its 30 licences before MEI’s acquisition demonstrating its potential to host large, high-grade rare earth ionic clays over a 15km scale that remains open at depth.Visit *, where ASX small caps are big dealsOf 1311 shallow holes drilled, more than 85 per cent finished with grades in excess of 1000ppm total rare earth oxides, with 22 per cent of those magnet rare earths terbium, dysprosium, praseodymium and neodymium.“Meteoric is fully funded for its 2023 exploration activities on the Caldeira Project, owing to the sale of the Juruena Gold Project, that was announced in June 2022, with the final payment tranche of $US17.5 million due in March 2023,” MEI MD Andrew Tunks said on announcing the deal last year.“Exploration activities at Caldeira will commence with diamond drilling to validate the depth extent of mineralisation, mineral resource estimation, regional target evaluation and additional metallurgical testwork.”MEI has already looked into the processing potential of the deposit, with initial met test work showing “excellent recoveries” using ammonium sulphate in weakly acidic, PH4 conditions. Low temp magnet REE praseodymium and neodymium recoveries averaged 58 per cent, with high temperature magnet REE terbium and dysprosium averaged recoveries of 43 per cent.Drilling began in late January, with a maiden resource expected early in the June quarter.
MEI Price at posting:
12.5¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
