Encounter Resources is celebrating high-grade niobium intercepts found at the Aileron project’s Crean deposit.
The Western Australian-based project is 100 per cent owned by Encounter and the company has been conducting aircore drilling at the site throughout 2024.
And this drilling has paid off, with continuous near-surface carbonatite intersected across four initial aircore drill lines at Crean.
“Aircore drilling is opening up new fronts of shallow niobium-REE carbonatite hosted mineralisation at Aileron,” Encounter managing director Will Robinson said.
“The aircore rig completed over 10,000m of drilling in its first month on site. This drilling has expanded the near surface footprint of the Crean, Hurley and Emily carbonatites.
“The aircore rig has now moved to the untested Green and Joyce targets located east of WA1 Resources’ Luni carbonatite discovery.”
WA1 Resources revealed similar high-grade intercepts from its Luni carbonatite within the West Arunta project in early June.
“Drilling will start with broad spaced aircore traverses and then move to closer spaced drilling based on initial observations,” Robinson said.
“Aircore drilling is proving to be a fast, low impact and cost-effective method to discover near surface niobium-REE mineralisation in this part of the West Arunta.”
The shallow mineralised trend at Crean is now over 800m long, strengthening to the west. Encounter is expecting the second batch of aircore samples from Crean in July.
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