East Star Resources PLC on Friday said ‘further test work is required’ after it received metallurgical results from its Talairyk rare earths project in Kazakhstan.

Shares in East Star Resources fell 26% to 2.15 pence in London on Friday morning.

East Star said that the mineralogy and total rare earth elements concentrations of the Talairyk samples are comparable to ion adsorption deposits globally with a kaolinite-dominated mineralogy, and range between 815 to 5,185 parts per million.

East Star that ‘further test work is required to assess if there is a potential route to commercial extraction’.

East Star said it will soon commence a five-stage sequential leach analysis of eight samples selected from drill intercepts across the site. The company said that if this test indicates a potentially economic leaching process, it will begin planning the next phase of exploration drilling and test more than 12 kilometres of potential strike inside the licenced areas.

Chief Executive Officer Alex Walker added: ‘Sequential leach testing clearly demonstrates that a majority of [rare earth elements] have been liberated from primary minerals during the weathering process and are now associated with other mineral phases.’

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