Altona Rare Earths (LSE:REE) published JORC-compliant Mineral Resource Estimates for fluorspar and gallium at its Monte Muambe project in northwest Mozambique, the company said in an RNS.
The fluorspar MRE totals 3.48 million tonnes at 20.6% CaF2 for 716,000 tonnes of contained CaF2, which at an assumed 65% metallurgical recovery and 97.5% concentrate grade underpins a base-case 9.5-year mine at 50,000 tpa acid-grade concentrate and shows potential to expand via the Kudu exploration target (up to 3.2 million tonnes CaF2 contained).
The gallium MRE totals 11.73 million tonnes at 54.7 g/t Ga2O3 for 641 tonnes of Ga2O3 contained, covers under 20% of the soil anomaly and the company cites potential to grow the tonnage to over 40 million tonnes while noting no Ga recovery methodology has yet been demonstrated.
"The publication of the Monte Muambe fluorspar and gallium MREs represent an important and transformative milestone for the Company," Cedric Simonet, CEO, said.
The MREs were prepared by Rock and Stock Investments in accordance with the JORC code with an effective database closure date of 1 May; the competent person is Joshua Hattingh.
Next steps include fluorspar metallurgical results expected by the end of the second quarter, completion of the fluorspar scoping study in the third quarter, and ongoing gallium metallurgical testing in Canada and Poland to determine commercial recovery pathways.
