Taruga Minerals has received final assay results from recent drilling displaying anomalies across a range of battery metals including copper, nickel, lithium and rare earths at its Morgan’s Creek project in South Australia. Anomalous values of palladium, vanadium and cobalt were also intersected.
Significant results from the latest round of drilling include 20 metres grading 0.23 per cent copper from 158m downhole and 6m going 0.12 per cent total rare earth oxides or “TREO” from 9m.
Additionally, one polymetallic drill hit gave up 10m at 0.19 per cent TREO, 0.08 per cent lithium, 0.05 per cent nickel and 217 parts per million cobalt from 35m downhole.
Many of the rare earths drill intercepts show high proportions of heavy rare earths in comparison to total rare earths figures with some intercepts showing up to 44 per cent mineralisation proportionally. Heavy rare earths are widely considered the real value drivers when evaluating a rare earths project due to their irreplaceable contribution to permanent magnets in many electric vehicle engines
Regolith hosted rare earths also showed high proportions of heavy rare earth elements in previously reported drill hits displaying grades up to 51 per cent of the total rare earth content.
The company says the geochemistry and mineralogy intercepted at its Hydrothermal Hill and Oxide Hill skarn deposits indicate a large alteration system and lie along the same trend as historical copper workings.
The two skarn deposits make up part of the greater Morgan’s Creek project and show an enrichment within the upper oxide zone with multiple drill hits at Oxide Hill exceeding previously intercepted grades.
Skarn is the high pressure or high temperature metamorphic zone around igneous rock intrusions where carbonate rich sedimentary rocks have invaded, contributing a suite of minerals that can be an indicator of nearby base metals mineralisation.
Taruga first started analysing the rare earths potential at Morgan’s Creek in mid-2021 after it received some anomalous grades back whilst targeting diapiric breccia’s for copper mineralisation. The company was pleasantly surprised to intersect a suite of shallow regolith hosted rare earths hits just outside of the diapiric breccias adding the highly valuable elements to its battery metals portfolio at Morgan’s Creek.
The most recent round of drill results rounds out the program at Morgan’s Creek with significant intercepts previously reported. Previous notable highlights include 2.55m grading 0.1g/t platinum-palladium and 140 parts per million cobalt from 47.2m downhole, 1.75m at 0.19 per cent TREO from 32m downhole and 2m at 0.25 per cent TREO from 39m downhole.
With such a wide range of battery metals on hand at the Morgan’s Creek project – Taruga is in the enviable position of being able to capitalise on and move in whichever direction the commodity markets swing.
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