Whitehaven lurks on the register at Rinehart-backed rare earth hopeful
It’s not just Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting that seems keen on Brazilian Rare Earths, the South American resources play that is counting down the days to a $314 million listing on the ASX. Whitehaven Coal, one of the country’s largest coal miners, is lurking on the register, sources say.
What Whitehaven, which has just secured a major deal to acquire two metallurgical coal mines from BHP, wants with a Brazil-focused rare earths miner is not clear. But, as a prospectus obtained by Street Talk makes clear, the minnow is thinking big. It will use the proceeds of a $50 million capital raise buy a “high advanced” exploration project from Rio Tinto.
Rinehart Trevor Collens
That’s one of the key details in the document drafted by the IPO’s lead manager and underwriter Canaccord Genuity. Mrs Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting is expected to own around 5.6 per cent of Brazilian Rare Earths once the company floats in December.
The company operates in the Bahia province in Brazil, where it holds exploration permits covering 141,000ha known as the Rocha da Rocha project. “The prospectivity of the Rocha da Rocha province for rare earths was confirmed by geophysical airborne surveys which revealed a large-scale geophysical anomaly surpassing the scale of many of the geophysical parameters that cover the Serra Verde rare earth deposit,” the prospectus reads, a reference to the largest known deposits outside of China.
Ground exploration drilling began in October 2021. Since then, Brazilian Rare Earths has drilled more than 18,000 metres of drill holes and conducted geophysical and geological surveys, the company says.
The Rio tenements that Brazilian Rare Earths has agreed to acquire, Amargosa, has been the subject of 10 years of
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