Idaho Strategic provides rare earth elements update, plans for 2025 season

Idaho Strategic (IDR) Resources provided an update on its extensive Idaho-based rare earth elements landholdings, including its plans for the 2025 REE exploration field season focusing on the Company’s Lemhi Pass project. To recap, on November 15th, 2023 IDR announced results from analysis of sampling at two prospects within its Lemhi Pass project. And as previously stated, the distribution of rare earth elements analyzed was 58% Nd, 8% Pr, 8% Sm, and 2% Dy, with these four elements combined to account for up to 76% of the total rare earth elements percentage. Idaho Strategic’s geologists, among others, speculate the favorable mix of REEs may be due to the substitution of lanthanum for a greater concentration of neodymium as illustrated in many Lemhi Pass samples analyzed to date. While much more work is required the Company’s initial findings support the potential for favorable project economics moving forward. As part of its ongoing analysis, and ahead of the 2025 work season, the company contracted Alpha Geologic for further study of samples from its Mineral Hill, Diamond Creek and Lemhi Pass projects. In 2025 the Company has plans for a considerably larger trenching and low-impact air rotary drilling program at Lemhi Pass in comparison to past efforts. Spanning over 12,000 acres, the Company’s Lemhi Pass project is expansive and exploring it thoroughly will take time. Using a combination of trenching and air rotary drilling is the best and lowest cost method for quick, larger scale exploration to aid in the eventual planning for a core drilling program and future resource definition. Idaho Strategic’s President and CEO, John Swallow commented, “We are understandably pleased with the results coming out of our Lemhi Pass project, especially in comparison to other well-known deposits across the globe, and just as domestic sourcing of REEs and mining in Idaho is receiving increased attention. It is also important to note that in concert with planned and ongoing REE exploration, we are also working with multiple national laboratories and independent companies to advance our understanding of the minerology of Idaho’s REE projects, and to investigate various separation and processing technologies. Given the specific nature of processing and separating REEs, we felt it necessary to supply REE samples from our projects for the development of innovative processing and separation technologies, which could inevitably result in those solutions/technologies being tailored to the minerology of our projects.”