East Star Resources Plc announced the award of a new exploration licence comprising 59 blocks ("Talairyk 1") at the Talairyk Heavy Rare Earth Elements ("HREE") Project in the Kostanay region of Kazakhstan (the "Project"), into which the Company is farming in for up to 90%. Talairyk 1 covers 134.7 sq km and is contiguous with the 10 sq km Talairyk Licence
Talairyk 1 is highly prospective for Ionic Adsorption Clay (IAC) hosted heavy rare earth elements: o Geological mapping at 1:50,000 scale shows granites the same as those generating the Talairyk HREE deposit (19,962 tonnes of contained Total Rare Earth Oxides (TREO) averaging 786g/t up to 58.6m thick)Historic grab samples within Talairyk 1 contain pathfinder elements Talairyk 1 will be included in the farm-in agreement with Phoenix Mining announced on 18 May 2022, with East Star expenditure on Talairyk 1 also contributing towards the agreed earn-in milestones Potentially economically extractible IACs are rarely found outside of South China with only a few in South East Asia in production and exploration/development projects in Australia, Brazil, Chile and Uganda. IAC deposits are comparatively rich in HREEs and are a primary source of China's and therefore the world's HREE production. IAC deposits offer several advantages to the more commonly occurring hard rock REE deposits where the rare earths are mostly hosted in complex mineral associations. These advantages include: Lower CAPEX: Deposits are shallow and free dig clays, keeping the footprint small, the pre-strip ratio low and with simple, conventional machinery and material handling methods. Processing generally requires no grinding or milling, removing these costly and energy intensive mills from the processing circuit Lower OPEX: Generally, the deposits are amenable to standard leaching techniques with weak electrolyte solutions, such as ammonium sulphate (widely used as a fertilizer for alkaline soils)and sodium or magnesium chloride Negligible radioactivity: Radioactive elements such as uranium and thorium occur commonly in hard rock REE projects. In IACs, the radioactive elements have been mostly removed by the weathering process along with the lower value light rare earth elements High-value basket of product: The heavy rare earth element market is small and commercial production is restricted to very few companies while the demand in the high-tech industry has expanded.