MTM Critical Metals Limited (ASX: MTM) emerged as an exploration company focused on rare earth elements, gold, lithium, nickel and base metals in the Goldfields and Ravensthorpe districts of Western Australia. Now, MTM is strengthening its portfolio with a carbonatite-hosted rare earth elements and niobium exploration project in Canada.
MTM holds more than 4500 square kilometres of tenements in three major mineral regions in Western Australia.
The East Laverton project consists of a regionally extensive package of under-explored tenements prospective for rare earth elements, gold and base metals.
The Mount Monger gold project covers known gold deposits and occurrences on the outskirts of Kalgoorlie, sitting immediately adjacent to the Randalls gold mine operated by Silver Lake Resources.
The Ravensthorpe project contains a package of tenements in the southern part of Western Australia, between Esperance and Bremer Bay, considered prospective for a range of minerals including rare earth elements, lithium, nickel and graphite.
Earlier this year, MTM enhanced its project portfolio through the right to acquire 100 per cent interest in the Pomme rare earth elements–niobium project located in Quebec, Canada.
‘The Pomme project is more an extension rather than an addition to our portfolio,’ MTM Critical Metals Managing Director Lachlan Reynolds told Future Mining.
‘We still consider our Western Australia projects to hold tremendous potential, something we demonstrated in May with significant extensions to the district-scale Point Kidman rare earth elements prospect and a new laterite nickel mineralisation discovery made at the Seahorse prospect at our East Laverton project.’
Be that as it may, MTM has wasted little time commencing drilling at the Pomme project, where it recently reported the completion of numerous diamond drillholes that have intersected visible rare earth elements mineralisation.
‘Our first diamond drillhole was extremely encouraging,’ Reynolds says, ‘intersecting over 500 metres downhole of carbonatite containing rare earth elements mineralisation and open at depth.’
MTM has high confidence in the Pomme project’s geological potential for the discovery of a resource, which the company considers makes it an ideal fit with its strategy to explore and develop high-quality rare earth elements projects that can ultimately supply critical metals to the rapidly growing global electric vehicle market and other decarbonisation technologies.
‘The drilling results we have already achieved from the Pomme project are beginning to shape our understanding of the geology within the carbonatite complex and the distribution of the rare earth elements mineralisation within it,’ Reynolds says.
‘Our initial work has quickly confirmed mineralisation extending over one kilometre to the north of historical drillholes, indicating that it is more than likely to be a very big system.
‘We are excited to begin testing new areas of the carbonatite complex in an effort to discover higher-grade mineralisation that could potentially be a new rare earth elements resource.’
