Meeka Gold up 5% on fresh REE results at Circle Valley

Meeka Gold’s (ASX:MEK) share price is up 5.8% approaching lunchtime trades on fresh hits of rare earth element (REE) mineralisation at the WA Circle Valley project. 

Located just north of Esperance, Circle Valley is prospective for both REEs, and shallow gold, which the company announced earlier this month. 

The latest REE intersections include high value magnet elements and Scandium. 

Scandium oxide, Meeka notes, is currently trading at US$1,000/kg. 

An aerial view of the Circle Valley project with overlaying drillhole locations

Circle Valley resource definition drilling in Q4

Meeka Gold notes drilling activities to define a mineral resource for Circle Valley will get underway later this year. 

Works there will start once the separate ongoing Cascade Rare Earths Project drilling run is concluded. 

Company management is optimistic on today’s results. 

“These high-grade zones have very high proportions of valuable magnet rare earths, over 45% of the total grade in areas,” Meeka’s managing director Tim Davidson said.

“We are also seeing very high Scandium grades…a valuable alloying metal used with aluminium to create light weight, high strength products.” 

More assay results pending 

Meeka Gold expects to receive assay results for nearly 15,000m worth of drill samples by mid-August. 

Those assay results are to come from Australia’s government nuclear regulator ANSTO; the agency conducts REE metallurgical tests due to radioactivity. 

Right now, a number of companies are waiting for results from ANSTO, a bottleneck in the Australian REE space. 

Earlier this month, that total backlog of assay results sat at 16,000m, indicating more high-impact news is likely on the horizon as Meeka.

Meeka's three month performance compared to the materials index (XMJ)