Octava Minerals (ASX:OCT) has defined a significant conceptual exploration target at its Byro project in Western Australia, estimating between 4.9 and 7.4 billion tonnes of mineralised black shale. The target covers three key commodities, with grade ranges of 207 to 431ppm total rare earth oxide, 159 to 331ppm lithium oxide, and 173 to 359ppm vanadium oxide. These figures emerge from a maiden 870-metre aircore drilling program, which spanned an area of 11 kilometres by 10 kilometres to a depth of 50 metres.

"We are pleased to release the conceptual exploration target for Byro. The recent aircore drilling was targeting a 12km x 14km area confirming large tonnages of mineralised black shale and siltstone."

"We have only drilled a part of the 35km of strike for the prospective stratigraphy at Byro and we believe this will increase with further drilling."
— Bevan Wakelam, Managing Director / CEO

The geological host material at Byro has already shown promise in preliminary metallurgical testing. Previous independent assessments using bioleaching on the black shale achieved recoveries between 70% and 80% over a 21-day period. Because this method operates at lower temperatures, it offers potential benefits in lowering energy consumption, reducing chemical reagent use, and decreasing the overall carbon footprint compared to conventional processing routes. Management is currently evaluating these sustainable extraction technologies for the large-tonnage, lower-grade material identified across the project area.

Looking ahead, the company has outlined a series of technical objectives to advance the project toward a formal resource estimate. The primary focus remains the scale-up of the current bioleaching testwork program to confirm if heap-based processing is viable at a commercial level. Concurrently, the exploration team is planning additional drilling campaigns aimed at converting this conceptual target into a maiden mineral resource. These efforts are designed to test the broader strike potential of the prospective stratigraphy, which remains largely underexplored despite the vast volumes of mineralised shale identified across the company’s extensive landholding in the Gascoyne region.

Read the full announcement: Exploration Target at Byro Critical Minerals Project