Crossland Uranium Mines Ltd

Crossland believes the Charley Creek REE project represents a unique opportunity to become an REE producer, with a short lead time to production and a potentially long mine life.

Crossland’s extensive program of stream sediment sampling, auger and aircore drilling, and bulk sampling, has indicated the existence of very large volumes of alluvium containing Heavy Minerals (HM) with high concentrations of Rare Earth Elements (REE).  Crossland considers that these alluvial deposits may support a high throughput/low unit cost alluvial mining project that recovers the minerals monazite and xenotime, which together contain the completer suite of REE elements.

The potential size of the deposits is of a scale that could support decades of REE production.

Although by hard-rock REE deposit standards the in-ground values are relatively low, this is offset by the following factors:

·         The alluvial material is easily treatable using low-cost methods familiar to the mineral sands industry to produce high grade HM concentrates for very low unit costs.

·         Significant recoverable REE values extend from surface to up to 30 metres depth, over very extensive areas.

·         The volumes of REE rich alluvium are potentially huge. Within a 150 sq km area embracing Cattle Creek, Western Dam and Dad’s Dam prospects aircore drilling indicates an average depth of alluvium of 17m. Thus if the deposits are proved to be viable, there is potential for decades of REE production.

·         Results of extensive testwork and processing on 4,200 stream sediment, auger and aircore drill samples, and bulk samples from test pits indicate that it should be possible for simple gravity processing to produce separate concentrates of Monazite (which contains Light and Medium REE), Xenotime (which contains the critical and valuable Heavy REE and Yttrium), Zircon and possibly other heavy minerals.

·         Crossland’s test work on alluvium samples is showing that REE concentrates can be produced with generally higher REE values (typically 10-50% TREO) than at typical hard-rock REE deposits, at potentially lower costs than those expected from conventional hard rock mining and concentration operations.

·        Compared with most hard-rock REE projects, the Charley Creek alluvial development concept could be brought into production in a short time frame to take advantage of current REE shortages and high prices. 

·         Crossland has demonstrated in test samples that monazite (containing light REE), and a separate mineral xenotime (bearing medium and heavy REE), contain most of the REE in its gravity concentrates. These minerals are regarded as primary feedstock for REE production, with few of the problems that may confront more complex mineralogy.

·         The proportion of the critical heavy REE in concentrates produced from Charley Creek alluvium is substantially higher than most other known advanced REE resource projects

       LOCATION & TENURE

 EXISTING JOINT VENTURE

The Charley Creek Project is subject to a joint venture between Crossland Uranium Mines Ltd and Pancontinental Uranium Corp, a Canadian TSX listed company. This joint venture commenced in April 2007 and Pancontinental earned a 50% interest in all of Crossland’s uranium tenements by the expenditure of A$8 million. Pancon is not currently contributing to the Joint Venture and has decided to dilute its position for at least the remainder of 2011.

 

SOURCE OF ALLUVIUM HOSTED REE

One of the Joint Venture’s titles, EL 25230, covers large areas of the exposed Teapot Granite Complex that is Crossland’s primary uranium target based on initial reconnaissance which identified different phases of the granite containing up to 6 times regional uranium background levels.  It became evident from Crossland’s early investigations that both the Teapot Granite and the gneissic rocks it intrudes are source of REE bearing heavy minerals that have been transported by erosion and outwash from the hills onto the Quaternary alluvial plains to the north. Although some of the more recent ELs; 27283, 27284, 27358 and 27359 and newer applications were selected for their potential for uranium in paleochannels and calcrete, the alluvial fans and buried drainage channels in the plains have been shown to be prospective for detrital heavy minerals containing REE.

 

COCKROACH PILOT RESOURCE ESTIMATION

The Cockroach prospect is located on Narwietooma Station within the hilly plateau country that forms the northern foothills of the west MacDonnell Ranges.  The resource itself covers the low lying sandy outwash which surrounds the low rounded hills of Teapot Granite being bisected by numerous small and occasional larger ephemeral sandy creeks.  A detailed auger and aircore drilling program was conducted at Cockroach prospect with a view to undertaking pilot resource estimation.  These alluvials are relatively shallow (average depth 1.2m), and about 17 million bank cubic metres (BCM) of alluvium will fall within Resource outlines in two separate drainage basins.  The drainages were close to an obvious source of REE minerals in the Teapot Granite so, in the early stages of the REE study, they represented a low risk opportunity to develop the methodology for defining and estimating an alluvial REE resource and to produce concentrates of monazite, xenotime and other heavy minerals. 

The study has provided valuable materials for testing, and knowledge that future REE alluvial resource evaluations will draw on.  It will also provide a supplemental resource to the larger deposits in the alluvial fans that are the main REE target for Crossland at Charley Creek.

The Cockroach pilot resource estimation program consisted of 1,261 auger/soil samples collected and 564 aircore holes for 1,256 meters and 1,279 samples.  All samples were processed to produce heavy mineral concentrates. 

 

 Bulk samples were obtained from 10 pits. These samples were used to prepare around (to date) 60kg of Wilfley table heavy mineral concentrate which is being used in mineral dressing studies now in progress under the supervision of the Company’s metallurgical advisers.

MINERALOGY

An investigation of mineralisation from the Cockroach Dam Prospect was conducted by ALS Mineralogy Pty Ltd, a joint venture between ALS Laboratory Group and JK Tech Pty Ltd, a subsidiary of University of Queensland.  This work used a Mineral Liberation Analyser (MLA) to examine the composition and texture of an initial batch of samples from Cockroach Dam. 

  Rare earth elements (REE) can be divided for convenience into light (LREE), medium (MREE), and heavy (HREE) groupings. Some REE, particularly the HREE are crucially important to the Renewable Energy Sector, and are classed by US Department of Energy (USDoE) to be in critically low supply.  The optimal mineral for HREE extraction is Xenotime (yttrium phosphate), which often contains the other HREE in significant amounts. 

 

Figure 6 shows a breakdown of LREO, MREO and HREO (light, medium and heavy rare earth oxides) averaged over 695 four metre composite samples from 220 aircore drill holes on the alluvial fans on the plains at Cattle Creek, Western Dam and Dad’s Dam prospect.  Also shown is the same LREO, MREO and HREO breakdown for 1,044 samples from Cockroach Alluvial Prospect.  

For comparison, the published proportions of LREO, MREO and HREO for three well known advanced REE projects: Mountain Pass, Mt Weld and Nolans are also shown in Figure 6.  Clearly the Charley Creek alluvial material contains a substantially higher proportion of HREO. 

The ALS Mineralogy study has found that these critical HREE are present exclusively (except Y) in the mineral xenotime, the preferred raw material for extraction of these elements.  Xenotime is mixed with dominantly monazite in the heavy mineral concentrate, and monazite contains the bulk of other REE present in the mix.  Some Y is present in one of three monazite variations detected in the mix. 

The mineralogy study results indicated that the monazite is highly liberated and zircon was also highly liberated.  The xenotime grains were less well liberated.  See Figure 7.

This information provides encouragement that a REE mix containing significant amounts of HREE could be extracted from Cockroach Dam  and Cattle Creek Alluvial Fans heavy mineral concentrates.  As the HREE occur in a separate mineral phase with optimal properties (Xenotime), the metallurgical behaviour of the concentrate should be enhanced.

PROPOSED FORWARD PROGRAM

Crossland is working on further exploration and development work that will proceed in the following stages:

Stage One

a)      Completion of metallurgical testwork currently in train to determine how to recover the various components of the HM concentrate into saleable products, and to determine what value added products the project will support.

b)      Investigation of groundwater availability for wet mining (dredging) using further airborne EM, drilling and bore flow testing.

c)      Further scout drilling and sampling to examine the regional characterisation of the HM ratios of the alluvium, with particular emphasis on areas of xenotime enrichment.

d)      Development of a detailed mining project financial model to assess on an ongoing basis the potential viability and required parameters of scale and grade for a profitable REE mining project

Stage Two

Detailed drill-out using aircore drilling, sample processing and assaying of a selected area of the alluvial plains based on the Stage One (c) above and engineering scoping studies to define a starting resource for possible development and mining