Rockfire Resources PLC on Wednesday said it has confirmed the presence of high-grade germanium and gallium at its Molaoi project, adding ‘significant further value’ to the project.
The London-based exploration company - which owns precious metal, base metal and critical mineral assets in Greece and Australia - said the high grades were found at its Molaoi zinc deposit. They were confirmed through analysis of recent drill core.
The Molaoi project, in southern Greece’s Peloponnese Province, also contains lead and silver deposits.
Rockfire recorded germanium grades between 9.0 and 40.0 grams per tonne, with an average of 23.7 grams over seven holes. Gallium grades between 9.7 and 19.0 grams were intersected with a 15.3 grams average.
The highest individual germanium assay was 73.8 grams per tonne and the highest gallium assay was 33.3 grams, both in hole MO_GTK_003A.
Rockfire said the discovery adds significant value to the Molaoi project, with an average 39% uplift in the core’s zinc-equivalent grade.
Due to their scarcity, both germanium and gallium are included on US and EU critical minerals lists, with germanium currently priced at about $2.8 million per tonne. Rockfire also noted that China announced plans in July to restrict exports on national security grounds.
Rockfire said its initial analysis of recent drill core failed to detect any germanium, despite the metal having been identified in historical core.
‘Our initial analysis for germanium involved a 4-acid digest of the sample, followed by an inductively coupled plasma (ICP) measurement,’ explained Chief Executive Officer David Price. ‘Our geologists elected to try an alternative analytical method which uses a lithium borate fusion... [which] provides full decomposition of the sample, including the most resistant minerals.
‘The results are extremely pleasing and many of the samples which initially recorded values close to the lower level of detection returned strongly elevated germanium,’ he continued. ‘The detection of gallium is a bonus and is expected to add further value to the Molaoi project economics.’
Rockfire shares were up 3.1% at 0.30 pence in London on Wednesday.
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