Rimfire Pacific Mining (ASX: RIM) has confirmed the Rabbit Trap project in central New South Wales as a significant scandium opportunity based on the results of recent aircore drilling at the historic Malamute prospect.
The company reported multiple new intercepts from the December campaign, which was designed to evaluate historic exploration results.
Best assays were 30 metres at 247 parts per million scandium (378ppm scandium oxide) from 25m including 16m at 352ppm (540ppm); 33m at 177ppm scandium (271ppm scandium oxide) from 14m including 9m at 326ppm (499ppm); and 44m at 175ppm scandium (268ppm scandium oxide) from 12m including 12m at 281ppm (431ppm).
The prospect was drilled over a 600m x 400m area and remains open to the north and east, with strong potential for extensions to the known mineralisation.
Expanding the footprint
Managing director David Hutton said the company was keen to expand the Malamute footprint.
“This prospect is characterised by a thick zone of scandium mineralisation that remains open laterally and we are confident that with further drilling, we could easily increase the size of this zone with the intention of generating a mineral resource estimate,” he said.
“We are building a globally-significant resource inventory of high-value scandium within the Fifield district and we believe Malamute has real potential to add to our substantial current resources.”
Malamute acquisition
Rabbit Trap comprises the EL8666 and EL9748 granted exploration licences which lie 50 kilometres north of Rimfire’s Fifield and Avondale projects in central New South Wales.
The company holds an exclusive option to acquire 100% of EL8666 (which houses the Malamute prospect) by paying current owner Javelin Minerals (ASX: JAV) a consideration of $125,000 in cash or shares.
Historic drilling
Wide-spaced air core drilling by Javelin in 2019 and 2023 identified laterite-hosted scandium overlying a weathered pyroxenite at Malamute and in December, Rimfire drilled 16 holes at the prospect on nominal 100m spacings to evaluate the significance of these results.
Drilling intersected a thick flat-lying zone of black-purple laterite clays overlying a strongly weathered ultramafic pyroxenite which returned strong scandium assays.
