Kendrick Resources says initial assessment work at its Kieshöhe Project in Namibia’s ǁKaras Region has confirmed the potential for what could become a major rare earth discovery alongside the company’s flagship Teufelskuppe deposit, with drilling returning grades of up to 5.46% Total Rare Earth Oxides and all boreholes ending in mineralised carbonatite, suggesting the system remains open at depth.
The London-listed company said the Kieshöhe and Teufelskuppe projects form part of the Bonya Rare Earth District in southern Namibia near Lüderitz and Aus, where the company is exploring a large carbonatite-hosted rare earth system.
Kendrick said systematic pXRF analysis of seven previously untested historical drill holes inherited through the Bonya Project acquisition delivered an average Total Rare Earth Oxide grade of 1.51 wt%, dominated by high-value light rare earth elements, including neodymium and praseodymium.
Among the strongest intersections reported were 1 metre at 5.46 wt% TREO in borehole KH013A, 1 metre at 3.53 wt% TREO in KH015, 1 metre at 3.22 wt% TREO in KH014 and 3.25 metres at 2.73 wt% TREO in KH013A.
Kendrick said the results increasingly suggest that earlier assumptions regarding the relative importance of Kieshöhe compared to Teufelskuppe may have significantly underestimated the project’s true scale and potential.
The company said that while grades at Kieshöhe appear marginally lower than those at Teufelskuppe, the overall tonnage potential could be substantially greater due to the scale and continuity of the carbonatite-hosted system.
Chairperson Colin Bird said the latest results represented a major milestone in the development of the broader Bonya Rare Earth District.
“These results mark an important milestone in the development of the Bonya Rare Earth Project and significantly enhance our view of the potential scale of the district,” Bird said.
“Historically, Teufelskuppe was considered the dominant discovery within Bonya. However, our ongoing assessment of Kieshöhe increasingly indicates that this view may prove to be overly conservative.”
Bird said the fact that every borehole terminated in mineralised carbonatite or associated rare earth-bearing dykes was particularly encouraging because it suggested the mineralised system remains open at depth.
“The discovery of widespread mineralisation, strong grades and, importantly, the fact that every borehole ended in mineralised carbonatite gives us growing confidence that Kieshöhe may represent a much larger rare earth system,” he said.
He added that the possibility that both Teufelskuppe and Kieshöhe are part of an extensive mineralised district creates an opportunity to define what could become a world-class rare-earth resource.
“With average grades of 1.51 wt% TREO placing Kieshöhe in the upper quartile of comparable hard-rock rare earth projects globally, together with high-grade intercepts of up to 5.46 wt% TREO, we believe the project has the potential to become a strategically important rare earth asset in its own right,” Bird said.
Kendrick said every borehole drilled to date terminated in mineralised carbonatite or rare earth-bearing dyke material, with the average borehole depth exceeding 85 metres.
The company noted that historical drilling conducted between 2016 and 2018 had already identified extensive carbonatite-hosted mineralisation, including grades of up to 10 wt% TREO and an overall project head grade of about 1.6 wt% TREO.
According to the company, the rare earth assemblage at Kieshöhe is dominated by cerium, lanthanum, neodymium, and praseodymium, with the strong presence of neodymium and praseodymium considered strategically important because of their use in permanent magnet technologies for electric vehicles, wind turbines, and advanced electronics.
Kendrick said that benchmarking against comparable hard-rock rare-earth developments globally places Kieshöhe in the upper quartile of rare-earth projects by grade.
The company added that exploration results increasingly indicate the Bonya district could host a rare earth system of global significance capable of supporting a major long-term critical minerals development in Namibia.
Bird said Kendrick has intensified exploration activities across both Kieshöhe and Teufelskuppe to define a combined resource capable of underpinning one of the world’s most significant rare earth developments.
“At the time of releasing the recent in-house valuation, we had not received the KH drill results and thus KH is assigned no value in the valuation report,” he said.
“The plan remains to integrate the two projects which will significantly enhance the overall project value and the contribution of Bonya in the rare earth arena.”
Kendrick said additional drill rigs are now active across the Bonya Project as the company works to expand drilling coverage, define the lateral and vertical extent of mineralisation, advance resource modelling and complete laboratory verification of pXRF results.
