ASX: BAK - Barkly Rare Earths
Barkly Rare Earths: Will this Aussie rare earths play end up at biblical scale?
Barkly Rare Earths Managing Director Craig Wright on 3AW & 2GB Bulls N' Bears Report
ASX-listed Barkly Rare Earths Managing Director Craig Wright talks to Matt Birney on Bulls N’ Bears about the massive scale of Barkly’s magnet rare earths deposit in Australia.
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Barkly Rare Earths is working up a rare earths resource that could have almost biblical scale at its namesake project in the Northern Territory. It already has two, shallow, flat-lying resource areas that sit about 20kms apart and the company thinks they might actually join together. Both are rich in the higher-value magnet rare earths used in electric vehicles and Barkly has just released the first results from a major drilling campaign — and the big picture is now emerging
RADIO INTERVIEW - TRANSCRIPT
Matt Birney - Welcome to Bulls N' Bears, brought to you today by Northern Territory rare earths explorer Barkly Rare Earths
Matt Birney - ASX code: BAK.
Matt Birney - I'm Matt Birney, and I'm joined now by the Managing Director of Barkly Rare Earths, Craig Wright.
Matt Birney - Hi Craig.
Craig Wright - Hi Matt, great to be here with you.
Matt Birney - Alright, Craig, so Barkly is working up what looks like it might be a almost biblical scale rare earth project in the Northern Territory. You've already got two very shallow resource areas, they're about 20 kilometres apart, and you're trying to fill in that big gap. Phase one drill results are out, you've tabled them. How many holes came back? How many hit mineralisation and how far apart are the bookends?
Craig Wright - We've got 28 out of 28 holes that have come back from the lab with mineralisation. At the outer extent, they're as much as 23 kilometres apart. So we're looking at a big, flat-lying, easy to get to mineralised body here.
Matt Birney - Yeah, now which holes put the biggest numbers on the board? Give me some width, steps, grades, et cetera.
Craig Wright - Yeah, so one of our intercepts here, two meters at 2,700 parts per million total rare earths with a high grade core at over 6,000 parts per million total rare earth oxide. And these are from as shallow as nine meters in these drill holes, four meters in some of our earlier drilling. I just should also preface that by saying this is not a hard rock resource. This is just soft rock right at the surface of the earth.
Matt Birney - Now, before this campaign, you had an initial resource across two resource areas. Exactly how far apart are those two areas and what is that initial resource?
Craig Wright - The initial resource is of 40 million tonnes of inferred is they're 19 kilometres apart and a grade 2,100 parts per million total rare earth oxide. That's for 82,000 tonnes of TREO including 28,000 tonnes of the magnet rare earth oxide.
Matt Birney - Okay, now you're working on a hypothesis that these two resource areas might link up. It's gonna be a hell of a project if it does. Have you got a formal exploration target or is it just theory at this stage?
Craig Wright - We came to IPO and and then ASX listing with an exploration target of 200 million to 1 billion tonnes of material at a grade of 1,600 to 1,900 parts per million total rare earth oxide. That's what we're drilling now.
Matt Birney - What percentage of those rare earths are the magnet rare earths, the more lucrative ones?
Craig Wright - Approximately 34% and that's reflected in the same drilling results we've got now.
Matt Birney - Craig Wright from Barkly Rare Earths
Matt Birney - Thanks for joining me on Bulls N' Bears and remember, we're only here to give you information, not advice, which you should of course seek independently.
Matt Birney - I'm Matt Birney and this is Bulls N' Bears.
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