Vital Commences Resource Definition Drilling At Tardiff Zone 1

8 March 2022

Growth strategy for large-scale, long-life light and heavy rare earths production

News Release, March 8, 2022

Highlights

  • •     Drilling program commences to define initial reserve for Vital’s ongoing Tardiff operation within its 94MT @ 1.4% REO resource (1.3 MT contained TREO)
  • •     Tardiff to be developed in a modular fashion, commencing at Tardiff Zone 1, before expansion to Zone 3, with further expansion along open boundaries
  • •     The current resource for the three modules (without consideration of recent drilling programs) is 16.3mt @ 1.85% TREO (or 303kt contained TREO). At the completion of these three modules further expansion may be considered throughout the remainder of the 1.3MT contained TREO resource
  • The first operational module will be focused on the Tardiff Zone 1 resource area (4.0mt @ 1.95% TREO or 79,000kt contained TREO) with expansion into the Tardiff Zone 3 resource area to occur after an initial 5-10 years production, with plant capacity and expansion to be determined based on customer demands
  • Modular development plan will enable Vital to apply flexibility to its operations to meet the requirements of customers and increase production as required.
  • Drilling at Tardiff Zone 1 aims to define a reserve for Module 1 mining operations
  • Drilling program to include sterilization drilling for infrastructure planning
  • Tardiff contains elevated heavy rare earths mineralisation to complement North T’s xenotime deposit, part of Vital’s strategy to be world’s first light and heavy REO producer

Canada’s first rare earths producer Vital Metals Limited (ASX: VML) (“Vital Metals” or “the Company”) is pleased to announce it has commenced resource definition drilling at the Tardiff deposit, part of its 100%-owned Nechalacho Rare Earth Project in Northwest Territories, Canada.

Vital has planned 48 holes to follow up on results from its 2021 program at Tardiff Zone 11, aiming to extend known high-grade REO mineralisation along the trends.

Vital plans to mine at Tardiff as part of its Stage 2 growth plan as it builds a large-scale, long-life rare earths operation at Nechalacho, executing its three-stage development strategy – Foundation (targeting customer acceptance of product – mining North T); Growth (expansion into 1 million contained tonne Tardiff resource, plus potential for Wigu Hill, Tanzania); and Heavy Rare Earths. It will use results from 2022 drilling to update a Mineral Resource Estimate for the high-grade Tardiff Zone 1 area, aiming to convert existing Inferred resources to Measured and Indicated resources, with the potential to be converted into reserves, with previous drilling identifying high grade zones opening the possibility for the contained tonnage to increase.

Vital Metals’ Managing Director Geoff Atkins said successful drilling could define a reserve to support the first 5-10 years of operation at Tardiff, dependent on customer demand. With this forming a small percentage of our total resource, along with clearly defined resources to support ongoing operations and further expansion, the future at Nechalacho is exciting.

“We aim to develop the Tardiff deposit in a modular fashion as part of our Stage 2 growth phase. This offers the opportunity for a much larger scale, longer life rare earths project at Nechalacho now that we have proven our ability to develop, mine and produce rare earths from the Stage 1 North T pit,” he said.

“We plan to develop the Tardiff Deposit in modules, commencing at Tardiff Zone 1 before expanding into Tardiff Zone 3 with further expansion possible along open resource boundaries, including to Tardiff Zone 2 which currently sits outside of our defined resources. The region identified as the target for modular operations at Tardiff has a defined resource of 16.3mt @ 1.85% TREO. With this resource containing over 300,000t of rare earth oxides the potential is enormous. Following our previous drilling program the initial focus of our first operations module will be the Tardiff Zone 1 resource area, which contains 4Mt @ 1.95% TREO (or 79,000t of contained rare earths). However, with our drilling campaign at Tardiff last year exceeding our expectations, achieving grades up to 13.78% TREO and consistently returning results above 2% TREO, with all our holes at Tardiff Zone 1 intersecting mineralisation, we see significant opportunities for improvement.

“We are currently completing follow up drilling to define an initial reserve at Tardiff Zone 1. This will form the basis for a pit to service Module 1. During development and operation of Module 1, Vital will continue to expand our reserve drilling throughout the defined 16.3mt @ 1.85% TREO (or 303kt contained TREO) resource to service continued and expanded operations.

“This is part of our three-stage strategy of development, in which we initially build the foundations at North T, then grow through expanded operations at Tardiff in Stage 2 and commence production of heavy rare earths in Stage 3, which would make us the only rare earths producer to achieve that.”

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