Locksley Resources shares boom on US critical minerals land grab
- James Pearson
- Sep 11
- 3 min read
Locksley Resources (ASX: LKY) has stamped its authority in California’s Mojave Desert by doubling its landholding to a commanding 40-plus square kilometres in one of the United States’ most strategically critical mineral corridors.
The announcement sparked a buying frenzy in the company’s shares today. The price rose 30 per cent to reach a fresh high of 36 cents a share on massive turnover. Locksley has been on a tear since May, with its share price rocketing more than 2000 per cent in just four months.
The company has now snapped up another 249 claims - lifting the tally to 491 at its Mojave Desert project - directly next door to MP Materials’ world-renowned Mountain Pass rare earths mine, which is North America’s only producing rare earths mine and processing facility.
Several of the new leases push Locksley’s Northern Block eastwards, extending ground already flagged as highly anomalous for antimony.
Further northwest, Locksley has picked up a new block 3km from ASX-listed Dateline Resources’ Colosseum gold and rear earths project. According to US Geological Survey datasets, this ground is peppered with flashes of polymetallic and precious metal mineralisation, opening up the potential for the company to expand its suite of metals.
The addition of extra ground to Locksley’s Southern Block, which immediately abuts MP Material’s famed Mountain Pass rare earths mine, has really got the tongues wagging.
Magnetic survey data across these leases has picked up strong signals of gneissic rocks and regional north-west-trending structures, which are almost identical to those found at Mountain Pass and considered prime pathways for rare earth-bearing carbonatites.
This expansion materially enhances our strategic footprint in the Mojave Corridor, a region central to US critical minerals security.
Locksley Resources Technical Director Julian Woodcock
Management said that the expanded tenure doubles the company’s footprint in the region and boosts the optionality of its “mine-to-market” strategy focused on developing upstream exploration through to downstream processing opportunities.
As Washington turns up the heat on securing a domestic supply of critical minerals, Locksley’s timing appears pitch perfect. Few commodities are higher on the government’s shopping list than antimony and rare earths.
In the past 12 months, China has dramatically cut the global supply of both metals by imposing export bans, leaving the US scrambling to de-risk its supply chains. Consequently, Locksley has found itself holding a front-row seat in the geopolitical theatre of minerals independence.
The company says claim staking is now complete and filings have been lodged. No competing claims were identified and Locksley is confident of securing mineral rights through adjudication.
With its new ground locked away, Locksley is wasting no time setting the wheels in motion. First on the list is ticking off registration with federal and state agencies. The company will then weave the fresh geological datasets into its broader exploration model to build a sharper picture of where the real hot spots might be hiding.
In the next month or so boots will be on the ground. The company is planning stream sediment and rock chip sampling across the new ground to sniff out high-priority anomalies in antimony, rare earths and polymetallics.
At the same time, Locksley is working through permitting so it can hit the ground running with drilling approvals once those targets have been mapped out.
Locksley’s Mojave project already hosts the historic Desert antimony mine, which last operated in 1937 and is considered one of the highest-grade known antimony prospects in the US. With no domestic antimony production currently in play, this alone makes Locksley’s ground strategically important.
With ground hard up against Mountain Pass and Washington ramping up efforts to cut Beijing’s grip on supply, Locksley’s latest move looks less like a punt and more like a power play.
The expansion has shaped up a critical minerals story with the dual appeal of local discovery upside and global geopolitical relevance - a combination that the market is finding hard to ignore.
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