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Heavy Rare Earths announced on 28 October that it had secured Western Australian Exploration Incentive Scheme co-funding for deeper drilling at its Subron project. The company described a A$150,000 drilling programme designed to investigate a possible source of the heavy rare earth enrichment previously identified in shallow material. The programme cost is not the disclosed value of the grant.
The geological model proposes that xenotime-bearing structures in basement gneiss could be associated with the enriched regolith above. Planned reverse circulation drilling will test fresh rock for evidence of that interpretation. Confirmation of a geological model remains an objective of the work, rather than a result already established by the funding award.
Eight angled holes are proposed, each with a planned depth of 180 metres and intended to provide approximately 100 metres of fresh-rock sampling. The company expects the samples to support studies of mineralogy, alteration, geological controls and the timing of mineralisation. Earlier resource-definition work comprised 547 vertical air-core holes that rarely penetrated fresh rock.
The deeper work is part of a wider programme planned for 2027. Separately, Heavy Rare Earths is reviewing the existing 159-million-tonne resource around higher-grade domains and undertaking mineralogical analysis to investigate processing routes. Those studies do not yet establish a revised resource estimate or commercial recovery performance.