A coal excavator loading coal at one of Macarthur Coal's mines in Queensland is seen in this undated photograph obtained April 9, 2010.
A coal excavator loading coal at one of Macarthur Coal's mines in Queensland is seen in this undated photograph obtained April 9, 2010. Reuters/Macarthur Coal/Handout

Macarthur Minerals and AIM Exploration, Inc., two emerging junior miners, are working on their respective mining locations around the Asia Pacific region for lithium, anthracite, feldspar and silica sand exploration and extraction.

On Wednesday, Rare Earth Minerals announced that Macarthur Minerals (TSX: MMS) has entered into a new conditional farm-in agreement. Macarthur Minerals is an Australian exploration and production company listed in Toronto. Rare Earth holds a 15.5 percent in Macarthur Minerals.

According to Yahoo! Finance, Macarthur will enter into a conditional, binding memorandum of understanding (MOU) for Zadar Ventures Limited to farm in. The Canadian lithium company will do so for an initial 51 percent interest in Macarthur’s Australian lithium acreage at Ravensthorpe, which comprises an area of 91 square kilometres. This will also be for a minimum expenditure of $2 million.

Located south of Western Australia, the acreage is approximately seven kilometres from the Mount Cattlin lithium project, which mines and processes spodumene and tantalum concentrate. The Catlin project targets a production of about 150,000 metric tons for 2017.

“Macarthur Minerals continues to make rapid progress on the Ravensthorpe acreage. The farm-in is the latest evidence of that,” said Kiran Morzaria, Rare Earth Minerals chief executive.

Meanwhile, AIM Exploration Inc. (OTC: AEXE) is also expanding in the Asia Pacific region, specifically, in the Philippines, where one of its projects is located. AIM owns a 40 percent interest in a feldspar mine, owned by local miner Paladino Management & Development. The 24-hectare site has produced feldspar for sale to domestic and export markets since the 1960s and is rich in feldspar, silica and limestone.

AIM-Paladino has applied to have the concessions increased to 648 hectares. The company has commenced construction of an 8,000-square foot building intended house a processing and storage plant capable of handling 10,000 tonnes of feldspar per month to meet growing demand.

Another significant project for the company is its Anthracite Coal Project in Peru. The AIM Exploration Peru, after acquiring mining concessions assets from Percana Mining Corp., now owns and controls the mining concession for 1,000 hectares of land in the Alto Chicama basin, in the province of Otuzco.

Anthracite, the highest-ranking coal, is more cost-efficient than gas, oil or wood. It is also the cleanest-burning solid fossil fuel, with its low sulphur and volatile content. It is used industrially in metallurgy, coal gasification and liquefaction, power generation, water purification and filtration, and also for manufacturing carbon composite materials. Anthracite is highly desirable, yet comprises less than 1 percent of global coal reserves.

Scientifically known as silicon dioxide (SiO2), quartz is one of the most abundant and widely distributed minerals found on the earth’s surface. Samples from the Utah silica sand property show a high quartz content of 97 percent — an important factor in the marketability of the sand to different customer groups.

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