High-grade drill intercepts at Araxá in Minas Gerais have now set St George Mining (ASX:SGQ) on the path to building an open-pit at the rare earths and niobium project to “quickly access high-value mineralisation,” the Australian explorer confirmed this week while sharing its latest Brazilian assays.
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The explorer’s now looking into low-cost open-pit plans − and the “potential commercial advantage” it would bring − after hitting rare earth and niobium mineralisation that consistently started from the surface.
“Drilling to the north-west of the existing mineral resource estimate has again delivered outstanding results,” said St George chairman John Prineas.
“[The results] highlight the emergence of this area as a coherent high-grade zone of mineralisation that could be mined separately to the measured and indicated resource already established south of the estimate.”
St George is continuing its exploration of the priority area, but is already convinced the system remains open both laterally and at depth. Several drill holes terminated in very high-grade mineralisation, including AXDD041, which returned hits from one metre at 22.42% TREO from 66 metres at end-of-hole.
Other deep intercepts also picked up by St George on-site at Minas Gerais in Q1CY26 included three metres at 7.9% TREO from 106 metres in AXDD040.
The company still has three diamond core rigs running around the clock at Araxá; this will stretch “indefinitely” in CY26 thanks to how well the program has already gone. More results are due in this quarter, too.
When they hit the books, St George will look to add to the project’s maiden MRE; currently 40.6Mt at 4.13% TREO and 41.2Mt at 0.68% Nb₂O₅.
Now − heading into Tuesday’s trade, SGQ is selling at 11.5cps.
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