Spark reports rare-earth and gallium anomalies at two targets in Brazil

Spark Energy Minerals reported new surface-sampling results on October 23 from the Boa Vista and Encachoeirado targets at its Arapaima project in Minas Gerais. At Boa Vista, soil sample ARA-SL-219 returned 15,434 parts per million total rare-earth oxides (TREO), including 35.3% magnet rare-earth oxides relative to TREO and 5,171 ppm neodymium-praseodymium oxides. A second soil sample, ARA-SL-080, returned 3,047 ppm TREO. These are point samples, not averages across a deposit.

Across the 81 Boa Vista soils in this release, 40 exceeded 500 ppm TREO. The company linked the samples to weathered Caladão Granite exposed along access routes, slopes and road cuts. Earlier drilling at Boa Vista had intersected a rare-earth zone 20 to 32 metres below the surface in five holes. Spark interprets the surface soils as parts of that zone exposed where the gallium-rich upper weathering horizon has been removed; the sample sites have not themselves been tested by drilling or trenching, so continuity remains unproven.

Encachoeirado is a separate target about 16 kilometres west-southwest of the Cruzeta drilling and had not been drilled when the release was issued. Reconnaissance work included 65 stream-sediment samples, 29 rock-chip-series samples and 13 soils. Six of the stream sediments exceeded 500 ppm TREO, with a maximum of 1,621 ppm. Rock chip ARA-CR-184 returned 2,428 ppm TREO, 637 ppm lithium oxide and 137.1 grams per tonne gallium oxide. Five of the 13 soils exceeded 50 g/t gallium oxide.

The company interprets the gallium in ARA-CR-184 as a mineralogical signature of mica in the pegmatite-biotitite rock, rather than the gallium associated with weathered clay at Boa Vista and Cruzeta. Spark calls the lithium and niobium levels in that specimen pathfinder anomalies. Stream-sediment anomalies identify material carried through a drainage basin, not the location or grade of a source; the release notes that samples upstream and downstream from the highest result were below the stated TREO threshold.

Spark says its next work would include closer-spaced soils and reverse-circulation drilling at Boa Vista, plus upstream sampling, mapping, trenching and channel sampling at Encachoeirado. The company made that work conditional on field conditions, financing, permits and access permissions. No mineral resource, reserve, preliminary economic assessment or metallurgical recovery result has been reported for Arapaima, and the release says its total-digestion assays do not establish what proportion of the elements could be recovered.

The release describes quality checks by SGS Geosol, an independent commercial laboratory in Minas Gerais. The company says samples were dried, crushed, split and pulverized before sodium-peroxide fusion and ICP-OES/ICP-MS analysis. It reported that duplicate and replicate pairs agreed within 9.4% for TREO, with a median difference of 3.0%, while quality-control reference materials were generally within three standard deviations subject to listed exceptions. The sampling itself was conducted by company personnel, and the qualified persons disclosed that no independent resampling or second-laboratory check analysis had been done.