Lodestar Minerals Limited (ASX: LSR), an active critical metals, gold and base metals explorer, has announced encouraging mineralogy results from its Virgin Mountain REE Project in Arizona, USA. The study confirms Xenotime as the dominant rare earth element (REE)-bearing mineral within rock chip samples taken from the project. This confirmation underscores the Heavy Rare Earth (HREE) potential of the Virgin Mountain project, positioning it strategically for funding and partnership opportunities.
Xenotime, identified as the primary HREE mineral, contains high proportions of dysprosium, terbium, and lutetium. These high-value HREEs are repeatedly identified by agencies in the USA as critically undersupplied, with significant exposure to foreign supply. Xenotime is currently one of the few HREE-dominant minerals with a proven commercial processing pathway. Dysprosium, terbium, and lutetium are crucial for developing critical defence systems in the USA and are essential for EV motors, wind turbines, defence and guidance systems, radar technology, advanced military electronics, and nuclear reactors.
The confirmed Xenotime samples were taken from a mineralised shear zone within a 5km-long mapped structure hosted by a Paleoproterozoic gneiss. Lodestar Minerals is on track to commence USA field activities in early April. The company’s Executive Director and Head of Exploration, Coraline Blaud, commented that the mineralogy reports returned exactly what they were looking for from an HREE project, allowing them to confidently state that mineralisation at Virgin Mountain represents a potential source of heavy rare-earth elements, particularly dysprosium, terbium, and lutetium.
Lodestar’s team will return to the site in April to work towards advancing Virgin Mountain into an advanced economic heavy rare earth asset. The company believes the project is well-positioned to advance as a heavy rare earth opportunity with strategic relevance to the United States’ domestic supply priorities. Further work is required to understand the geological mode and determine the controls on mineralisation.
