Thor Energy reports positive results from Alford East review

Thor Energy announced new rare earth element (REE) drill results from a review of the previously-announced 2021 copper and gold drilling at the Alford East Project in South Australia on Tuesday.

The AIM-traded firm said the review revealed significant REE drill intercepts, including, 36.7 metres at 0.16% total rare earth oxide and 1.2% copper from 6.3 metres in hole 21AED005, and 11.6 metres at 0.17% total rare earth oxide and 0.26% copper from 30.4 metres in hole 21AED002.

Eight out of nine of the 2021 diamond drill holes intersected wide zones of highly enriched REEs in kaolin-altered, copper-rich oxide zones of IOCG-style mineralisation, Thor explained.

It said mineralisation remained open over a five-kilometre trend, as none of the remaining historical drilling at Alford East, to the best of the company's knowledge, had ever been assayed for REEs.

A full geochemical review of the historic drilling was now underway to assess the lateral extent of the REE potential within the Alford Copper Belt, to generate drill targets and to fully assess the economic potential of the discovery.

The board said the kaolin association could represent an ionic style of REE mineralisation - a highly-valuable REE deposit class, often characterised by favourable low-cost metallurgical recovery compared with many other types of REE deposits.

Thor said the magnetic component content of the total rare earth oxide was up to 34%, adding that Alford East is strategically located about 150 kilometres northwest of the state capital, Adelaide.

“I am absolutely delighted to report these thick zones of shallow, high-grade REE intercepts, found to be associated with oxide copper-gold mineralisation at the Alford East Project,” said managing director Nicole Galloway Warland.

“This batch of results compares very favourably in terms of depth, thickness and grade to its peer group in the fledgling Australian REE sector.

“Importantly, this discovery has significant potential to be a large deposit based on the five kilometre lateral extent of the north-south trending, structurally controlled troughs hosting IOCG mineralisation.”

Galloway Warland said it was “promising” that, aside from the nine 2021 diamond drill holes now reported, none of the other historic drilling at Alford East was known to have ever been assayed for REE content.

“Priority drill programme design is underway in conjunction with detailed geochemical reviews of the historic drilling, along with further studies on the nature of the REE mineralisation encountered to date.”

At 1253 BST, shares in Thor Energy were up 13.33% at 0.34p.

Reporting by Josh White for Sharecast.com.