Mount Burgess Mining hits elevated total rare earth oxides at Tsumkwe Project in Namibia

Mount Burgess Mining (ASX: MTB) has returned portions from three of five vertical open-hole percussion drill holes at its 85%-owned rare earth element (REE) target at Tsumkwe Base Metals Project in Namibia, all indicating elevated total rare earth oxide (TREO) grades.

Nigel Forrester, Mount Burgess's chairman and managing director, told Proactive Investors today “obviously we can only report our results in accordance with the JORC code, as right now we don’t have a resource. What is encouraging however is the fact that NAM909 drill hole was drilled to 100m depth and is still in elevated REEs, so the potential for some depth to this is good.
"The other issue is from tests done to date, the dominant host of the REEs is synchysite which I am advised is possibly the best host mineral to have because of its low thorium and uranium content. Not only that, in our case, the particle sizes of the synchysite, so far detected in petrographic analysis are large, over 100 microns, some being well over 250 microns. Because of the size, I am advised that the SGs are therefore high, which from a metallurgical point of view, makes it easy to separate and extract them.”
Mount Burgess is ramping up exploration at the Tsumkwe targeting a rare earth prospect, as well as building on the Resource potential at the Kihabe/Nxuu base metals project in Botswana.

Rare earths progress at Tsumkwe has so far flown under the investor radar, however results to date indicate some early stage potential that bears watching.

On July 20 Mount Burgess intersected significant cobalt from the first hole drilled on a strong magnetic dipole anomaly at Tsumkwe.

The company believes that the magnetic anomaly could be a hydrothermal deposit, possibly a VMS (volcanogenic massive sulphide) deposit.

Further drilling, mineralogical and petrographic analysis will be required. In order to determine if the anomaly is a VMS deposit the company said it needs to get back more results.

Originally published at: http://www.proactiveinvestors.com.au/companies/news/18645/mount-burgess-mining-hits-elevated-total-rare-earth-oxides-at-tsumkwe-project-in-namibia-18645.html