Krakatoa Resources Limited (ASX: KTA) has confirmed thick continuous intervals of pallid saprolitic clays in its maiden drilling campaign at the Tower REE prospects at the Mt Clere project located in the north-western margins of the Yilgarn Craton, Western Australia.
“This drilling has been highly successful by extending the zone of the thick saprolitic clays towards the south, in line with the area defined by the exploration target,” CEO, Mark Major, said.
“Our focus is now to deliver a maiden JORC compliant resource as well as gaining further understanding into the amenability of the REE’s extraction processes to obtain a high-level understanding of the project’s potential.”
The work programme consisted of drilling 100 air-core (AC) holes over the Tower prospect to assist with future resource estimation work and opportunistic step-out drilling over the Tower west prospect. A total of 3,153 metres were completed.
Twelve scout holes were initially drilled at Tower West for 412m. Eighty-eight holes for 2,801m were then drilled at the Tower prospect to infill previous drilling and to extend known mineralisation to the east and south-east.
The Tower drill holes were nominally drilled at a 200-metre spacing, particularly in the area where the 2021 discovery drilling took place. Further south, the hole spacing increased to around a nominal 400 metres.
Holes positions were selected based on eases of access, level of vegetation and topographical relief as no drill platforms or access tracks were used.
Extensional drilling to the east encountered greater thicknesses of transported cover and laterite material, whereas drilling to the south-east returned encouraging visual indicators that the REE mineralisation at Tower may be slightly variable in thickness and continues in that direction for a considerable distance of around 4.5 kilometres. Accordingly, we can confirm thick and continuous zones of the REE-hosting clay horizons.
The location of the drill holes in the Tower West scouting programme were selected based solely on ease of access from station tracks, topographical relief, and vegetation coverage. Limited holes were drilled in this area to solely test the southern extent of the target area along the station track.
The drilled holes encountered a similar pallid saprolitic clay zone. The zones here are not as thick or continuous as at Tower itself but the drilling has also been more widely-spaced and reconnaissance in nature.
Exploration Target
The Exploration target for the Tower prospect has been estimated at 87 to 519 million tonnes grading 580- 1120ppm TREO; using modelling of 39 vertical reconnaissance air core (AC) drill holes assay results from the 2021 drilling.
It is projected that the mineralisation continues to extend over adjoining geologically prospective areas that have similar basement geology, regolith development, radiometric and spectral indices. The grade and thickness of the mineralisation in these exploration target areas was determined from the 2021 drilling and regolith mapping.
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