U.S. Grant Validation at Mining Indaba Signals Growing Momentum for Altona
“…We had a lot of engagement with potential strategic partners, potential off-takers for the first part, and even African government delegations, high-level delegations…”
Altona Rare Earths has been in Mozambique since 2021; its chief executive Dr Cédric Simonet had been working in Africa for almost a decade before his appointment and there’s very little he doesn’t know about the rare earth opportunities in Africa particularly on the East side.
Not of Mozambican descent, Simonet is definitely naturalised. The French born geologist speaks Portugese the main language of Mozambique, and in addition to English and Swahili he is currently learning Amharic as spoken in Ethiopia.
It was unsurprising therefore he was asked to represent Mozambique at this year’s Mining Indaba and give a talk about the country as an investment opportunity. The talk was well attended by those with influence.
“We had a lot of engagement with potential strategic partners, potential off-takers for the first part, and even African government delegations, high-level delegations,” says Simonet who was able to share at Indaba that the United States Trade and Development Agency is giving Altona a grant to support the pre-feasibility study at its flagship Monte Muambe rare earth project.
This in itself is an exceptional stamp of approval from the U.S., and Simonet reminds investors that Muambe is not one, but two projects; the rare earth opportunity and the fluorspar and gallium project.
The first batch of assay results from the 2025 drilling campaign have been analysed for the latter project with more expected over the coming weeks. Already investors are delighted with chatroom trumpeting of ‘high grades, good widths, near surface and bi-product potential in a hot commodities space.’ Simonet is more restrained saying he is ‘satisfied’ with what he has seen so far.
As he explains to Sarah Lowther in this video interview, “Once we have all the assay results, getting to the mineral resource estimate doesn’t take a lot of time because the competent person is already working on the rest of the data and will just have to input the assay results as they come in and then do the final computation.
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Altona Rare Earths featured in our 20 Mining Companies to follow in 2026 feature
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The author was remunerated but does not hold shares in the company
