London-listed, South Australia-focused Cobra Resources has declared a maiden mineral resource estimate (MRE) of 150-million tonnes grading 470 parts per million (ppm) total rare earth oxides (TREO) for the Wudinna project.

This equates to 70 400 t of contained TREO, with the company being confident it can further increase the size of the resource through additional drilling.

In fact, the company has set an exploration target of between 665-million and 1.4-billion tonnes grading between 376 and 478 ppm TREO across the Boland and Head targets.

Notably, about 61% of the site's Pidinga formation ore tonnes and 57% of the Pidinga formation TREO metal tonnes are evaluated as amenable for in-situ recovery (ISR).

Further work is required to demonstrate permeability and recovery through ISR methods to constitute additional Pidinga material as ISR recoverable.

Cobra has announced a five-pillar strategy to advance the Wudinna project to production, which targets bottom-quartile costs of production through ISR techniques, maximised heavy rare earth content, appropriate commercial partnerships, disciplined financing and permitting, and demonstrated scale with staged production.

For CEO and MD Rupert Verco, the maiden resource marks an important milestone in the development of the Wudinna rare earths project - the only controlled aquifer rare earth element-bearing ISR project being advanced in the western world.

"The resource has been delivered cost effectively with significant scale upside for future growth. The MRE will underpin a scoping study on the project and provide the foundation for the company's five-pillar development strategy.

Verco says the objective is to establish a pathway to bottom-quartile production costs by optimising recovery, producing a higher-value product and reducing downstream separation costs.

"Field trials will test our operating assumptions while we seek customer engagement, partnerships and permitting progress alongside technical work."