Dateline Resources, quietly exploring for rare earths at Colosseum, flags several drill targets

Dateline Resources (ASX:DTR) has continued to progress its foray into becoming a rare earths producer with the formalisation of several drill targets on-site the company’s acreage following analysis of magnetic surveys. 

The company now believes there are REEs present over 2km of strike located, in turn, only 1km north of the Colosseum open pit gold mine between 150m-250m depth. Width of the anomaly varies between 200m and 450m. 

Dateline perceives it may be able to avoid building a second pit operation by instead using the bottom of the existing open pit mine to simply tunnel ahead to the anomaly. 

Next step in ongoing pivot 

Earlier this month, Dateline revealed it had found notable concentrations of REEs in initial samples collected at the company’s Colosseum gold mine acreage. 

That project is located to the north of the USA’s largest (and sole) operating REE mine, called Mountain Pass, operated by NYSE-listed MP Materials. 

The Mountain Pass project boasts a mill feed grade of 8% Total Rare Earth Oxide (TREO) content. A quick comparison with Australian projects shows the significance of that 8%: 

• Lynas Corporation’s (ASX:LYC) WA Mt. Weld boasts 5.2% TREO 

• Hastings Technology’s (ASX:HAS) WA Yangibaba boasts 1.11%

The superior grades at Mountain Pass, Dateline hopes, continue to occur geologically further north, where the Colosseum gold mine is located. 

Of particular interest to the company is the fact it has found neodymium, which a major Chinese benchmark currently placed at USD$154,660/tn in early August. 

Dateline well placed to fund operations 

The company also sold its first gold concentrate to a Korean gold smelter earlier this year, officially making it a gold producer, also highlighting Dateline’s strong position to continue funding its own exploration activities. 

Also worth noting is that the company completed a $4m share placement in June to boost the ongoing operations at Colosseum. 

Sophisticated and professional investors in Australia agreed to invest in the company with 40m shares at 10c issued to accelerate the USA project footprint. 

Gold to REEs 

Some 813,000 ounces of gold remain recoverable from Colosseum, which, under previous ownership, was a pure play gold operation. 

It turns out, however, old guards knew there was high-impact rare earth mineralisation on-site. They just never did anything about it, effectively handing Dateline an unexplored REE project.

Dateline Resources' three month charts

Disclaimer: Market Index helps small-cap ASX listed companies connect with Australian investors through clear and concise articles on key developments. Dateline was a client at the time of publishing. All coverage contains factual information only and should not be interpreted as an opinion or financial advice.