THE company behind the huge Goschen mine project has identified a new deposit nearby that will boost its reserves of rare earth and heavy mineral sands by more than 40 per cent.
In an announcement to the Australian Stock Exchange this week, VHM Ltd reported test drilling had revealed the reserves at Cannie, about 13.5km south of the Goschen project.
This takes the total estimated reserves across the two projects to 589,000 tonnes.
Even better, the rare earth minerals and zircon, rutile and leucoxene at Cannie are of higher grade than expected and at higher grades than most of those reported at Goschen, south-west of Swan Hill.
VHM said detailed engineering design work was well advanced for Goschen, and advanced exploration was under way at Nowie, north of Goschen.
“The resource at Cannie … confirms a major new critical mineral province stretching over 55km length along the western flank of the Lake Boga granite in northern Victoria,” the company said.
“The results from the recently refreshed Goschen Project Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) confirm that VHM’s critical mineral deposits which are hosted in sand and extracted using conventional process technology, deliver minerals of exceptionally high purity with excellent recoveries at significantly lower cost to competitors in the market.”
VHM managing director Graham Howard said the company’s rare-earth inventory was now one of the largest in Australia.
“And this is complemented by the significant zircon inventory of 5.1 megatonnes and rutile inventory of 2.7 megatonnes,” he said.
“We are on track to deliver one of the world’s largest critical mineral deposits which we believe could support several project hubs that, once developed, feed critical minerals into supply chains to enable decarbonisation of global economies.”
VHM has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Swan Hill and Gannawarra councils.
