Krakatoa gets funding boost to drill for sulphides at Mt. Clere from WA government

Krakatoa Resources (ASX:KTA) shareholders have enjoyed small gains this morning as the company reveals its successful application for $180,000 in funding from the WA government to proceed with Q4 sulphide drilling at its Mt. Clere project. 

In the drill run today’s grant is funding, Krakatoa will go sniffing out sulphide targets it detected in an airborne electromagnetic survey earlier this year, and targets will also be selected against a checklist of former datasets. 

The drilling at Mt. Clere, predominantly a Rare Earths play, has been selected out of 38 successful recipients of the WA’s latest Exploration Incentive Scheme (EIS) grant round; a $10m fund designed to foster and encourage (read: incentivise) greenfield exploration in WA. 

It is likely that Krakatoa’s Mt. Clere project, a rare earth element (REE) play, was selected in part due to stable critical minerals supply chain strategies also being designed by the overhead Federal government. 

Worth noting is that today's funding grant, however, funds sulphide drilling on-site.

Grant underscores potential: Management 

“The successful application for the EIS grant shows the level of prospective targets the company has identified over the last 18 months,” Krakatoa CEO Mark Major said. 

“We have been planning to drill these targets since June and are now on the cusp of undertaking the maiden drilling.” 

“Our team have recently completed the heritage survey work and have now secured a suitable drill rig to start before the end of this quarter.” 

Maiden drilling proper, but not maiden maiden 

This will not be the first time drills have hit the ground at Mt. Clere. Krakatoa was busy aircore drilling on-site earlier this year, which saw the geotech team bring the drill rig out onto the prolific Yilgarn Craton. 

As for rare earths, Krakatoa suspects REEs on-site are bonded to clays underground, which poses desirable implications for relatively painfree downstream processing. 

Australia’s dedicated REE test lab, which is actually managed by Australia’s nuclear regulator ANSTO, has already seen samples from Mt. Clere come in through the laboratory doors. 

ANSTO is tasked with REE testwork given that rare earths tend to coincide with thorium and contain monazite; both radioactive substances.

A look at Krakatoa's three month charts

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