Heavy rare earth explorer starts Lofdal 2B-4 prefeasibility drilling
The developers of the Lofdal 2B-4 Heary Rare Earth project, Toronto-listed Namibia Critical Metals, said at the end of January, it has begun resource in-fill drilling as part of the project pre-feasibility.
Namibia Critical Metals president, Darrin Campbell said, “Our team is excited to get back to drilling at Lofdal after our incredibly successful 2020 drill campaign which delivered a six-fold increase to our maiden resource. The goal of this drill campaign is to move more of the established resource to the measured and indicated categories for our Pre-Feasibility Study 2B-4 which is under way. Over the next few months, we will also be evaluating ramping up production from 2 million tonnes TREO per annum run-of mine in the current PEA 2B-4 to 3 million tonnes.”
“I expect the next year to be one of the most impactful periods in our corporate development as we continue to accelerate pilot plant testing through feasibility to production,” he said.
“Phase 1 of the resource drilling campaign has commenced at the end of January 2023 and aims at drilling of 35 RC holes for a total of 4,930 m in Area 4 until mid-March 2023. A Phase 2 campaign of 4 RC holes of 310 m length each is planned to conclude RC drilling for the [pre-feasibility] by end of March 2023.
“Four in-fill boreholes are planned at Area 2B to obtain samples across the planned pit “2B” for variability test work at SGS Lakefield. Variability tests will conclude metallurgical test work to conduct flotation and hydrometallurgical processing on pilot plant scale.
Namibia Critical Metals said it has completed a geotechnical drilling campaign on 15 December 2022. A total of 7 holes for 1,326 m was drilled in the hanging walls of the planned pits “2B” and “4” to take samples for geotechnical testing. The geotechnical studies are contracted to SRK Consulting (South Africa) in Johannesburg and are planned to be completed by end of March 2023.
“The Lofdal deposit has the potential for significant production of dysprosium and terbium, two of the most valuable heavy rare earth elements, and is targeting to become a long term, sustainable supply of heavy rare earths,” according to the company.
