Dateline expands into heavy rare earths with new California project

Australia’s Dateline Resources (ASX: DTR) is expanding into the “heavy” rare earth element (HREE) exploration space with the addition of a second project in California.

On Friday, the company announced its acquisition of the Music Valley project, which comprises 57 mining claims in Riverside County covering 1,140 acres of land.

The broader Music Valley area was previously explored by the US Geological Survey, and its first rare earth was identified in 1954. Past work by the USGS showed that the mineralization has a fractionated HREE
signature.

Strategically, HREEs are considered vital to national security, as they are essential to building defence systems, advanced electronics and next-generation energy technologies. However, supplies of these minerals are heavily concentrated outside the US.

According to Dateline, historical sampling by the USGS returned high grades of heavy rare earths such as yttrium and dysprosium. Overall, the rock chip samples had total rare earth grades of between 6.69%-15.04%.

Dateline Resources’ shares surged more than 17% by market close in Australia, giving the company a market capitalization of A$1.5 billion.

Expanded US portfolio

“Music Valley gives Dateline direct exposure to heavy rare earth mineralization in California with
historically reported high-grade TREO results and strong heavy rare earth enrichment,” stated Dateline’s managing director Stephen Baghdadi in a press release.

As part of the acquisition, Dateline will invest $1 million in the project’s owner, Fermi Critical Minerals, which focuses on uranium exploration in the US.

“Our $1 million investment in Fermi provides additional leverage to a substantial US uranium
and rare earth portfolio, including drill-permitted projects in Wyoming and Colorado,” Baghdadi said.

The project adds to the Australian miner’s presence in California, where it is exploring the Colosseum project situated in the Mojave Desert. The company previously noted that the Colosseum project shares the same geological setting as Mountain Pass, currently the only producing US rare earth mine. Both Colosseum and Music Valley also have a history of gold mining, with the former holding a JORC-2012-compliant gold resource of 1.1 million oz.

To advance the Music Valley project, Dateline said it will conduct further geological mapping as well as review and integrate the historical USGS data.