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  • Ragusa Minerals (RAS) discovers “significant” rare earth element (REE) mineralisation at its Burracoppin project in Western Australia
  • The company receives assays for 147 composite samples taken from maiden drilling, with 40 per cent averaging 1493 parts per million total rare earth oxides (TREO)
  • The results also returned high-grade alumina averaging 33.73 per cent, with a peak of 38.3 per cent alumina oxide and an ultra-bright ISO brightness of 88 per cent
  • Ragusa plans to use these and upcoming lab results to complete a maiden mineral resource estimate for the Burracoppin project
  • RAS shares are up 15.52 per cent to trade at 16.75 cents at 12:52 pm AEDT

Ragusa Minerals (RAS) has discovered “significant” rare earth element (REE) mineralisation at its Burracoppin project in Western Australia.

The company has received partial assay results for all 147 composite samples taken from 1143 metres of drilling at the project, and ISO brightness (ISO-B) results have been received for 50 of the 147 samples so far.

Forty per cent of the samples returned total rare earth oxides (TREO) above a 500 parts per million (ppm) cut-off, with an average among these of 1493 ppm TREO and a peak value of 6285 ppm TREO.

The results also indicated Burracoppin contained “exceptionally high-grade” alumina averaging 33.73 per cent, with a peak grade of 38.3 per cent alumina oxide. This corresponds with an ultra-bright ISO-B of 88 per cent. Furthermore, 50 per cent of the samples have an ISO-B of greater than 80 per cent.

According to Ragusa, these results exceeded quality metrics for both bright white kaolinite with very high alumina levels and TREO levels with elevated magnetic rare earth oxide (MREO) components.

“This is a positive result for the potential multi-commodity development of our project — with upcoming laboratory analysis results used to delineate a JORC mineral resource,” Ragusa Chair Jerko Zuvela said.

“We look forward to progressing the strategic critical minerals discovered at Burracoppin.”

Interestingly, the work conducted to date covers only five per cent of the project area, which Ragusa said left room for “enormous potential” to develop a major multi-commodity project.

Once the company receives the remaining lab results, it plans to complete a maiden mineral resource estimate.

RAS shares were up 15.52 per cent to trade at 16.75 cents at 12:52 pm AEDT.

RAS by the numbers
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