On Friday, February 5, I flew from Cape Town in a small plane, to Springbok, Northern Cape Province, Republic of South Africa, to visit a privately-owned rare earth exploration site there. I was impressed by two aspects of the deposits that the owners had discovered so far:
- The grades presented were as high as 21%, and
- the proportions of high atomic-numbered, so-called "heavy," rare earths, such as dysprosium, terbium, and europium were high enough to make these ore bodies, if they are proved to be extensive, valuable enough to bring them into contention, even at current prices, as economically developable today as concentrate producing mines.
The next afternoon, Saturday, February 6, I was walking down the street that runs along a beautiful beach, Camp's Beach, west of the Cape Town waterfront when I spotted the Chairman, President, and in-house publicist for Canada's Great Western Minerals Group (GWMG) sitting in a sidewalk café drinking what I can only assume was sarsaparilla, since it was only 1:00 PM, local time. GWMG had invited me to visit their rare earth property also in the Springbok area at a place called Steenkampskraal, but I was unable to go as I had already agreed to go to the other site when the GWMG invitation was proffered...
Read more about my encounter with the gentlemen from GWMG, their Steenkampskraal mine and more on the role of Canada and South Africa as the future of global rare earth supplies in my latest article at The Jack Lifton Report:
Comments welcome!
Best wishes
Jack Lifton
Technology Metals Research, LLC
31126 Country Bluff
Farmington Hills, MI 48331
USA