The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Mining Explorers 2024 - January 15, 2025
In 2024, Vital Metals Ltd. took significant steps to refocus its rare earths strategy at the Nechalacho project in Canada's Northwest Territories, advancing its world-class Tardiff deposit after a challenging year of restructuring and setbacks.
Following a turbulent 2023 that saw the bankruptcy of its Canadian subsidiary and the abandonment of its rare earths processing facility in Saskatchewan, Vital Metals restructured its leadership and refocused on the larger, lower-grade Tardiff deposit – a strategic shift driven by financial challenges and a new vision for Nechalacho, with the goal of establishing a long-term, scalable rare earths operation in the Northwest Territories.
Located about 100 kilometers (62 miles) southeast of Yellowknife, Nechalacho is recognized for its rich deposits of rare earths, particularly neodymium and praseodymium – essential elements for the permanent magnets used in electric vehicles and renewable energy technologies.
Exploration at Nechalacho originally centered on the high-grade North T deposit, where small-scale mining began in 2021. Despite its high concentrations of rare earths, the limited size of North T led to a pivot in 2023, with Vital shifting focus to the larger Tardiff zone, which the company determined offers longer-term potential and making it the focal point of the company's future development plans.
According to a calculation completed in April 2024, the Tardiff Upper Zone hosts 31.1 million metric tons of measured and indicated resources averaging 1.15% (358,000 metric tons) total rare earth oxides (TREO); plus 181.6 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 1.17% (2.13 million metric tons) TREO.
Assays returned around the beginning of 2024 played a key role in shaping the company's exploration strategy for the year; highlights from the final batch of assays from 2023 included:
• 47.1 meters averaging 2% TREO from a depth of 28 meters in hole L23-633, with a standout intercept of 1.9 meters averaging 7.9% TREO.
• 12.5 meters averaging 2.3% TREO from 22.5 meters in L23-638, including 1.7 meters averaging 5.3% TREO.
• 53.5 meters averaging 1.5% TREO from 6.7 meters in L23-639, including 1.8 meters averaging 8% TREO.
• 24.7 meters averaging 1.5% TREO from 20.3 meters in L23-643, including 1.4 meters averaging 4.9% TREO.
"Across the board, our results point to areas within Tardiff of more continuous higher-grade mineralisation that we can target in future expansion drilling," said Vital Metals Vice President of Exploration Natalie Pietrzak-Renaud.
These results helped guide Vital Metals' 2024 drilling, focusing on expanding resource boundaries and better defining high-grade areas enriched with neodymium and praseodymium – critical to advancing the Tardiff project's long-term potential.
The work undertaken throughout the year was planned to be incorporated into an updated mineral resource estimate for Tardiff. This updated resource will inform the company's ongoing scoping study, which is set to outline the economic and engineering parameters for future development.
Additionally, metallurgical test work was initiated to refine processing techniques for neodymium and praseodymium extraction, further de-risking the project as it moves toward feasibility studies.
"We anticipate busy months ahead as we commence new metallurgical testwork shortly, and bring together the geological data; working toward completing our scoping study," Pietrzak-Renaud added.
In addition to its exploration, 2024 saw further changes in leadership at Vital Metals. In July, Lisa Riley was appointed as managing director and CEO, replacing Geordie Mark, who had held the position for less than a year.
Riley brings with her over 30 years of experience in global capital markets, finance, and mining advisory, offering a fresh direction as the company continues efforts to stabilize and refocus following the instability of 2023.
"We are extremely happy to announce Lisa's appointment to CEO and MD and we expect a smooth transition, given her longstanding involvement with the company," said Vital Metals Chairman Richard Crookes. "We look forward to a reinvigoration of our market-facing activities as we continue to complete scoping study work on our Nechalacho rare earths project."
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