Rare Earth Minerals PLC Reports New Discovery In Greenland

Results from sample analysis exceed expectations, says Rare Earth Minerals PLC (LON:REM).

The Motley Fool Staff

Published 13 October, 2014 9:59 am BST

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Rare Earth Minerals (LSE: REM) this morning announced that the analysis of samples taken during the recent exploration programme on its Greenland exploration licenses has confirmed a new discovery of rare earth elements (REE) near Narsarsuaq in southern Greenland. The Greenland exploration licences are 100% owned by REM.

The company said that the results from the 16 samples re-submitted for analysis exceeded its expectations, with five of them exceeding 7,000 ppm total rare earth oxides (TREO) and another two exceeding 2,000 ppm TREO. The highest result was just over 18,000 ppm TREO. There were three significant neodymium oxide (Nd₂O₃) assays, with values ranging from 1,446 ppm to 2,928 ppm.

The analysis so far has been conducted on out-crop, sub-crop and float samples, and REM says it will be interpreting the results to determine the scope of further field work and to identify a possible source for the highly anomalous REE results.

Commenting on the announcement CEO Kiran Morzaria said:

“The discovery of a new Rare Earth Element deposit east of the world class Kvanefjeld REE project is significant for REM. These assay results are orders of magnitude higher than those previously reported and are indeed higher than the reported resource grades on the nearby Tanbreez deposit. In addition some of these samples contain significant quantities of neodymium oxide, which is a critical rare earth oxide or CREO as defined by the US department of energy. This along with the proximity of these results to two of the world’s largest REE deposits, is very encouraging indeed.”

At 0.913p, and despite the positive news, REM’s share price is currently down 6.35% in trading so far today. But even with this morning’s fall REM is up 7.2% on this time last year, during which time the FTSE All-Share index has fallen 2.6%. And over five years REM has gained 140%, compared with a 13% rise in the FTSE All-Share.

But, like many small exploration and mining companies, REM is not for the faint-hearted and its share price has experienced some phenomenal volatility. In those past five years REM’s share price has seen a fall of 97% (between the start of 2011 and mid-2013) and a rise of 1,900% (in August 2013) — fine if you were in for the long term, and spectacular if you bought and sold at the right time, but potentially ruinous if you didn’t.