Latitude 66 preps for EU-funded, deep-rock critical minerals hunt

Latitude 66’s KSB project in Finland is a key part of a wide-scale, €5 million (A$8.91M) European Union-funded, deep-rock geophysical and geological exploration and innovation program that will hunt for new critical mineral resources. 

The imminent UNDERCOVER project aims to increase raw materials production and will include Finland’s Kuusamo Schist Belt, which hosts Latitude 66’s flagship project.

UNDERCOVER – an acronym for ‘unified novel deep exploration for critical ore discovery’ – is being funded through the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation program.

UNDERCOVER also aims to develop new technologies to advance critical raw materials exploration to about 1000 metres vertical depth.  

The program will comprise extensive seismic and electromagnetic geophysical measurements across multiple Finnish municipalities located around Latitude 66’s flagship grounds, including Kuusamo, Posio, Taivalkoski, Ranua, Salla, Kemijärvi, Rovaniemi and Pudasjärvi.

The project's studies will extend beyond Finland to the Iberian Pyrite Belt in Portugal and the Kalahari Copper Belt in Namibia, where it will also develop and integrate new exploration technologies and targeting methodologies.

Latitude 66 managing director Grant Coyle said: “It’s exciting for the first work program of the UNDERCOVER project to commence… The work program covers Lat66’s 100%-owned KSB project, where we recently completed a robust scoping study that demonstrates potential for a standalone gold-cobalt development with upside potential.” 

Data collected within the geophysical program will help Latitude 66 develop further exploration targets, which could expand the company’s KSB project, Coyle said.

The planned seismic surveys will include broad, regional-scale coverage, with between one and four stations in each municipality.

A detailed seismic program will be conducted across Latitude’s KSB North and KSB South projects in the Kuusamo area. Three broad seismic sites have been located equidistantly around the margins of the detailed survey area and will serve as “ties” for the surveys.   

The program will include other geophysical methods, such as magneto-telluric (MT), audio frequency magnetics, semi-airborne electro-magnetic measurements and controlled-source electro-magnetic surveying (CSEM).

Many MT survey stations will be distributed across the survey area, spaced between 5 kilometres and 15km apart. MT surveys measure the natural time-varying electromagnetic (EM) fields that pass through the Earth and are associated with global electrical activity, including thunderstorms and the interaction of the Earth's magnetic field with the sun's solar wind.

CSEM uses artificial electromagnetic sources to map sub-surface electrical resistivity. By transmitting electromagnetic signals into the ground and measuring the response, CSEM can reveal the presence and distribution of conductive or resistive bodies, which can indicate geological features such as hydrocarbon reservoirs or faults.  

The measured response is used to create a resistivity model of the subsurface, highlighting variations in conductivity. The method is particularly sensitive to changes in subsurface conductivity and can differentiate rock types.

A helicopter will fly an EM survey over a 200 square kilometre area of Latitude’s KSB project ground to run an EM survey. The method is commonly used to detect conductive sulphide-related deposits where strong conductivity contrasts may exist between sulphidic deposits and the surrounding country or host rocks and/or thin surface cover. 

The Geological Survey of Finland (GTK) will coordinate the three-year campaign of intensive multi-disciplinary surveying and related studies, which will be accompanied by geological mapping and sampling to age-date rocks and for soil geochemistry analysis.

The total survey area in Finland extends over a 170km north-south by 157km east-west area for a total of 26,700 square kilometres. 

An international team will collaborate on data collection across the Kuusamo Schist Belt and will include staff from the GTK, Latitude 66, the Geological Survey of France and the Czech Academy of Sciences.

The project’s German partners will include the University of Münster, Supracon AG, the Leibniz Institute of Technology and the Technical University of Berlin.

UNDERCOVER presents as an epic-scale undertaking. It is rare to see such a broad level of international cooperation with such a wide application of technologies focused on specific targets.

Beyond this, the program has strong potential to bring immediate discoveries and will almost certainly develop and integrate new exploration and targeting technologies or refine existing methods that may have global flow-on effects lasting many years. 

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