Solid gold hit for Meeka at Esperance rare earths play

Multi-commodity explorer Meeka Metals continues to rack up high-grade gold hits at its Circle Valley project near the WA town of Esperance, where it expects to soon deliver a maiden rare earths mineral resource.

The intriguing intercepts appear to be evolving into a significant gold footprint covering several kilometres at the company’s underexplored tenure.

Meeka believes information gleaned from a diamond drilling campaign last year is helping it better define gold mining targets and improving its understanding of the area’s wider gold system.

Banner results from the company’s latest haul at its Anomaly A prospect featured 16m running at 1.5 grams per tonne gold from 36m, including a 4m core coming in at 3.89 g/t, along with 8m going 2.79 g/t from 124m with an internal 4m chiming in at 5.15 g/t gold.

With only a smattering of shallow drill holes peppering the prospect, the company has etched out a gold footprint over an area of 1200m by 400m and it remains open along the strike and at depth.

Additionally, significant gold mineralisation was also intercepted in the only drill hole plunged into the company’s Fenceline prospect, which sits about 10km north-east of Anomaly A. It returned an encouraging 4m going 2.97 g/t gold from 92m.

Meeka’s latest gold hunt undertaking has seen a total of 20 RC holes drilled for 2056m into a pair of anomalies, following last year’s successful foray with the drill bit that stumped up 23m at 5.09 g/t gold from 13m, 24m going 1.21 g/t from 24m, 16m running at 3.06 g/t from 32m and 10m grading 4.72 g/t gold from 120m.

The junior explorer lays claim to just over 220 square kilometres of tenure at its Circle Valley project, covering a section of the south-western Albany-Fraser Mobile Belt that houses the behemoth 7.1m-ounce Tropicana gold mine, which is operated by joint venture duo AngloGold Ashanti and Regis Resources.

Meeka Metals Managing Director, Tim Davidson, said: “Circle Valley is located in a zone of major tectonic activity on the margin of the Yilgarn Craton and bounded to the south by an interpreted granite intrusion, important features for a possible large Proterozoic gold system. The complex structural sequence, shearing and faulting, provides the conduits for large-scale hydrothermal fluid flow and our drilling confirms this fluid flow carried high-grade gold.”

As local landholders gear up for the seeding season, Meeka has engaged independent Proterozoic gold experts at consultancy Kenex to undertake mineral-potential mapping in a bid to refine its targets ahead of further drilling slated for the second half of this year.

The company is also in the final throes of infill drilling in the leadup to its much-anticipated rare earths maiden mineral resource estimate. The program has focussed on the north-western zone of the deposit where significant total rare earth oxides (TREO) up to 6894 parts per million have been returned.

Meeka says the mineralisation persistently demonstrates a high proportion, up to 30 per cent of the TREO grade, of valuable neodymium and praseodymium - two so-called magnet rare earth elements with strong and diversified demand.

The light rare earths are integral to the manufacture of expensive permanent magnets used in electric vehicles and wind turbines, in addition to communications and military technology.

The project is one of two rare earths plays the company has near WA’s southern coast, along with its Cascade operation to the south-west. Cascade was pegged on the back of Circle Valley’s potential and covers an impressive tenure of more than 2000 sq km. Notable strikes from Cascade include 16m at 2223ppm TREO from a shallow depth of 44m.

As the US banking sector enters another period of volatility following the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, the price of gold has hurtled up nearly US$100 since Friday to close at more than US$1900 per ounce.

It beckons a look back into US banking history, which offers some important insights into the price of gold during periods of financial volatility. With the collapse of Lehman Brothers in late 2008, signalling the start of the global financial crisis, the price of gold swung from US$760 per ounce in October of that year to peak at US$1820 per ounce in September, 2011 - a meteoric rise of nearly 140 per cent as investors looked towards gold as a safe haven to park their funds.

While the true effect of the US banking saga is yet to play out, Meeka Metals has hedged its bets as it continues to progress its critical rare earths play at Circle Valley in tandem with exploring for the precious yellow metal in an underexplored patch of prime real estate.

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