Bastion Minerals (ASX: BMO) shares have jumped 30% today on their saking over a claim on rare earths in Sweden. That there are rare earths in Sweden is well known for this is where the entire series of metals was first found. The village of Ytterby is where the first earths ores were discovered and Ytterium, ytterbium, erbium and terbium are all named after this one little village. It's also true that there's a large rare earth find (in apatites) by the state mining company up in the north of the country. There's no doubt that there are other such deposits around the country.
So, Bastion now has a mining claim where historical exploration showed that there were rare earths: “Rock chip samples of groeater than 2.86% (28,600 ppm) and 3.64% (36,400 ppm) Total Rare Earth Oxide (TREO) are recorded in historic sampling with some detection limits exceeding the actual result will be greater than these figures” Those are high grades but do note that they're of chips - the concentration in rock, rather than in small pieces of it, will be significantly lower. The one possible difficulty comes here: “The REE-mineralisation exhibits an encouraging average ratio of Magnetic Rare Earth Oxide (MREO) to TREO at almost 20%,” The big expense in rare earths comes not in the mining but in the separation of the concentrate. Current rare earth prices mean that significant sums are lost on the bulk materials (cerium and lanthanum) and those have to be made up on those magnet metals. Given that prices vary wildly it's not possible to have a firm cut off point as to viability. But 10% magnet rare earths in concentrate is almost certainly below it, 30% above it and 20%, well, it depends. Approximately, and very roughly, at Nd/Pr prices of $100 a kg then 20% does become the viability point.
It's possible to say therefore that while this is a rich rare earths deposits - at this very early stage of exploration - it might not be all that rich in the rare earths that matter.
Bastion Minerals share price from ASX
The thing that makes us less than wildly excited about such rare earth finds is that such mineralisation is not exactly rare - rare earths are not in fact rare. More than that, a much more interesting source of rare earths has recently been shown to be much more common than previously thought - the ionic clays. OD6, Heavy Rare Earths and others have been announcing significant finds these past few months.
Given the very early stage of exploration here, plus that 20% heavies number, we'd rate this Bastion Minerals find as mildly interesting so far but not much more than that.
