Brought to you by BULLS AND BEARS Murray Ward July 27, 2026 — 13:13 Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add more. TOTOTO Barkly Rare Earths has sent the first batch of samples from its 10,000 meter resource expansion drilling campaign to the laboratory,
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Murray Ward
Barkly Rare Earths has sent the first batch of samples from its 10,000 meter resource expansion drilling campaign to the laboratory, a key step in its effort to increase its already significant rare earths inventory at its flagship Barkly project in the Northern Territory.
The campaign is designed to test surface mineralization around the company’s existing 40 million tonne inferred mineral resource, which has an impressive total grade of 2,100 parts per million (ppm) rare earth oxides (TREO).
Previous drilling between these two areas crossed rare earths, suggesting the potential for significant lateral expansion along the intervening 20 kilometer corridor.
Barkly has defined an exploration objective that gives an idea of the scale he is pursuing. It ranges between 200 million and one billion tons with a grade of between 1600 and 1900 ppm TREO. If the company can get even close to the lower end of that range, it could have a globally significant deposit.
“This is where the campaign moves from meters drilled to test results.”
Craig Wright, CEO of Barkly Rare Earths
The company has adopted a two-pronged strategy for the campaign. The first stage will involve drilling a series of deeper holes, 60 metres, to provide a stronger geological framework for the current deposit. The platform will then move on to the main event, a pattern of up to 400 shallow wells averaging just 25 meters deep targeting an area called the Immediate Zone.
This Immediate Zone lies within a little-explored 20 kilometer corridor connecting the two resource areas and the first samples from the program have already arrived at the ALS laboratory in Brisbane for analysis.
Barkly Rare Earths CEO Craig Wright said: “The objective is clear: to test the shallow mineralization around our existing 40 Mt inferred resource and generate the data intended to support a resource upgrade later this year.”
Barkly says what makes the project attractive is not just the potential scale but the high proportion of valuable magnetic rare earth oxides, which make up 34 percent of the total resource. These are the critical elements for manufacturing high-strength magnets used in everything from electric vehicles to wind turbines.
Crucially, initial tests have turned up low levels of uranium and thorium, both unwanted elements that can often complicate processing.
In another notable milestone, leach tests achieved a 74 percent extraction rate of magnetic rare earths with early stage beneficiation workings producing a mineral concentrate with a significant TREO grade of 29,000 ppm.
In addition, Barkly has two recent grants of $115,000 each awarded under the prestigious Northern Territory Drilling and Geophysics Collaborations program.
And while the company’s main focus is its rare earths project, it also has the Buntine project in the Northern Territory, where it is looking for greenfields of base metals. In particular, it says the geology of the project at Buntine is the same as that of the rocks hosting the world-class McArthur River lead-zinc deposit with polymetallic mineralization that has already been identified over a length of nine kilometres. Initial rock crushing has returned grades of up to one percent lead, 1,760 ppm cobalt, and 7,100 ppm nickel.
In what appears to be a smart business move, Barkly has signed over the uranium rights at its Murphy West project, also in the NT, to fellow ASX-listed explorer DevEx Resources. The deal allows DevEx to earn up to 75 percent interest by spending $3.5 million over five years, giving Barkly a “free shot” of exploration on its turf.
With initial drill samples from its rare earth expansion campaign in the lab, the market will be watching for the first assay results to begin flowing in shortly.
Barkly has stated its intentions to deliver an updated mineral resource during the final quarter of the year and, given that the company is starting with 40 million tonnes in the bag, it clearly has a big exploration target in sight. And with plenty of prospective ground to test, things could soon get very interesting for Barkly as he looks to potentially define a project of global importance.
Is your ASX-listed company doing anything interesting? Contact: mattbirney@bullsnbears.com.au
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