When Australian Critical Minerals lists on the ASX early next month, Kula Gold will waste no time saddling up with its new joint venture (JV) partner for a multi-mineral hunt at the Rankin Dome project in the Western Australian Wheatbelt town of Southern Cross.
Kula today revealed the imminent public listing of its new partner, Australian Critical Minerals (ACM), ahead of the JV’s plan to search for gold, lithium and the much sought-after rare earths.
ACM, which has a proposed ASX listing date for Monday next week, has six projects spanning 1861 square kilometres in WA’s Pilbara and Goldfields regions. As part of the JV agreement, it will spend $200,000 to help fund 2000m of reverse-circulation (RC) drilling within two years to earn a 51 per cent interest in Kula’s Rankin Dome project.
The JV plans to immediately set about firing up the drill rigs at the project once ACM settles into its new digs on the market.
The scheduled listing of ACM will facilitate a concerted exploration effort by our joint venture partner on the Rankin Dome REE/Lithium Prospect in the Southern Cross region which has anomalous REE and lithium elements advancing to a drill ready prospect. Kula Gold chief executive officer Ric Dawson
ACM’s prospectus saw an oversubscription of shares from eager investors closely eyeing the emerging market for rare earths, which typically overlap with critical minerals.
Critical minerals are the group of elements that world governments, including Australia’s, have prioritised for exploration and production in recent years. They are needed in crucial applications from aerospace and defence assets to MRI machines and wind turbines and the list of uses is becoming increasingly non-exhaustive.
A large part of the impetus is designed to reclaim some market share from the world’s dominant rare earths miner and producer, China.
Rankin Dome is just 50km from IGO’s Wheatbelt-based Lake Campion rare earths play. The company applied for 10 exploration licences comprising the acreage in late July last year. They were selected because of their high-prospectivity for rare earths.
Gold is also on Kula’s radar at Rankin Dome, with one historical drillcore from the Donnybrook Gold Mine prospect plugged by BHP turning up a high-grade section going 6.8 grams per tonne gold.
Investor information provider Undervalued Equity classifies high-grade gold as that starting at concentrations of 5g/t. However, many Australian projects boasting 4g/t are also considered high-grade.
Lithium, the global market’s favourite battery metal, also remains an exploration focus at Rankin Dome. Existing electromagnetic geophysical data for the project will inform early-stage drill runs.
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