Eastport’s Semarule Hits 5.95% Rare Earth Peak in First Drill Hole

A single diamond drill hole in south-central Botswana has returned 7.5 metres at 2.52% TREO and a peak sub-interval of 2.5 metres at 5.95% TREO, numbers that stand in sharp contrast to the surface rock-chip samples that were, until this week, all the project had to show.

The results come from Eastport Critical Metals (TSXV: EVI; OTCQB: EVIIF) and its Semarule rare earth project, and they mark the first assays released from an eight-hole Phase 1 diamond drilling campaign. Seven additional holes remain unreported. Semarule sits within a 15-square-kilometre target zone approximately 40 kilometres northwest of Gaborone, and this release is the moment the project stepped from surface sampling into drill confirmation.

The question these first numbers raise is not whether Semarule has rare earths. Historical sampling already established that. The question is where the project now sits in its de-risking journey, and what the seven pending holes could clarify about scale. What follows below gives readers a clear basis for judging whether these results are genuinely material or merely exploratory noise.

What hole SEM005 actually returned, and why the grade distribution matters

Read from the outside in, the SEM005 result tells three different stories depending on which interval you look at. The broadest picture is a 330-metre intercept grading 0.21% TREO from 20.0 metres downhole, a wide but low-grade envelope.

Narrow the focus and the grade climbs. Within that envelope sits 47.5 metres at 0.64% TREO, also from 20.0 metres. Narrow it again and the concentration sharpens further: 7.5 metres at 2.52% TREO from 22.5 metres, and inside that, the standout figure of 2.5 metres at 5.95% TREO from 27.5 metres.

SEM005 was drilled at a -50-degree dip to a total depth of 349.9 metres. The geometry of where it was placed matters as much as what it found: the hole sat at the western edge of a gravity anomaly, testing the structural margin rather than the anomaly high itself.

That positioning changes how you should read these grades. Drilling the margin rather than the core means SEM005 represents a floor for what the campaign might encounter, not a ceiling. The holes still to come are aimed more directly at the anomaly centre.

CEO commentary Daniel Major, Chief Executive Officer, said the results point to strong grade continuity potential, favourable structure, and the prospect of material-scale mineralisation across the target zone.

For anyone tracking early-stage rare earth exploration, grade distribution is the first thing to understand before deposit potential can be assessed at all. SEM005 rewards a careful reading precisely because the story shifts depending on which interval you choose to focus on.

For readers new to interpreting intercept tables and grade distributions, our full explainer on reading drill results covers how nested intervals work, what true width versus downhole width means, and how to compare early-stage intercepts across different deposit styles.

What the geology tells us about where the REEs are concentrated

Those short, high-grade peaks are not random. In syenite and carbonatite systems, they cluster where geological processes have concentrated rare earths into focused zones, and understanding that mechanism turns the SEM005 numbers from a curiosity into something structurally predictable.

The geological host at Semarule

The project is hosted within syenite intrusions overlying Archaean granite. According to Eastport, the underlying Gaborone granite was metasomatically altered in place to form syenite, which was then intruded by further syenite bodies, with carbonatite dykes cutting through the sequence.

Semarule Syenite Hill is exposed across roughly 5 by 3 kilometres. Mineralisation concentrates in the more mafic syenite bodies, where historical surface TREO values reach up to 3,000 ppm. The Botswana Geoscience Institute flagged these syenites in 2020 as carrying among the highest total rare earth values of any sampled granitic rock in the country, exceeding 2,000 ppm.

How the rare earths became concentrated

Geological syntheses of carbonatite-syenite systems point to three main processes driving rare earth enrichment:

• Fractional crystallisation: as magma cools, minerals crystallise in sequence, progressively concentrating rare earths in the residual melt.
• Melt-fluid immiscibility: rare earths partition preferentially into carbonate-rich melts that separate out from the parent magma.
• Metasomatism and fenitisation: chemically active fluids alter the rock around intrusions, mobilising and redepositing rare earths.

This is why the short, high-grade sub-intervals in SEM005 line up with focused fluid pathways, vein zones, and apatite-rich zones that act as rare earth traps. It also explains why Eastport has been watching visual indicators in the remaining cores closely, having earlier reported fenite alteration, calcite veining, and apatite-rich zones in the unreported material.

The presence of those same indicators elsewhere in the campaign tells you the conditions that produced SEM005’s high-grade peaks may repeat. That makes the pending results more than routine updates.

Why mafic dykes act as REE traps in this setting

Mafic dykes function as conduits for late-stage fluids that leach rare earths from the surrounding syenites and redeposit them in veins and apatite-rich zones. That process concentrates the metal into narrow, focused structures rather than spreading it evenly.

It is precisely why the highest-grade sub-intervals in SEM005 are narrow and near-surface rather than distributed uniformly across the full 330-metre envelope. The grade lives where the fluids focused it.

The Kameelburg project in southern Africa offers a direct structural parallel: carbonatite rare earth systems operating in analogous geological settings have returned high-grade intercepts where late-stage fluid pathways concentrated mineralisation into narrow, assay-confirmed zones, precisely the mechanism Eastport’s geologists are mapping at Semarule.

The MREO ratio and what it means for the deposit’s commercial relevance

Total grade is only half the commercial story. The other half is what the grade is made of, and here Semarule carries a figure worth pausing on: within the enriched 47.5-metre interval, magnetic rare earth oxides average approximately 28% of TREO.

Magnetic rare earth oxides (MREOs) are the combined oxides of neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, and terbium. They are the critical feedstocks for the permanent magnets used in electric vehicle drivetrains and wind turbine generators.

Rare earth market demand data published through 2025 consistently points to magnet metals, neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium, as the highest-growth segment, with ex-China supply remaining structurally insufficient to meet the projected EV and wind energy build-out through the end of the decade.

• Neodymium (Nd₂O₃): core alloy metal for high-strength permanent magnets.
• Praseodymium (Pr₆O₁₁): used alongside neodymium in magnet alloys.
• Dysprosium (Dy₂O₃): improves magnet performance at high temperatures.
• Terbium (Tb₄O₇): also supports high-temperature magnet stability.

The 28% ratio is consistent with the 25% MREO proportion returned by 2023 surface rock-chip samples that graded above 0.5% TREO plus yttrium oxide. In other words, the drill core is confirming a basket composition already hinted at by surface work.

Why that composition matters comes down to supply and demand for magnet metals.

Market context Macquarie’s October 2025 outlook forecast a deficit in the NdPr market balance for 2025, with supply of 108 kt against demand of 110 kt, a shortfall the bank expected to persist into 2026 and 2027.

Rainbow Rare Earths’ 2025 review projects that magnet rare earths face a sustained deficit, potentially reaching a 23-kilotonne shortfall by 2040. Benchmark Mineral Intelligence has also reported that China’s expanding export controls, noted as of April 2025 though not independently confirmed here, have driven a rising ex-China price premium for heavy rare earths such as dysprosium and terbium.

A 28% MREO ratio means Semarule’s basket value is weighted toward the elements with the steepest demand growth and the tightest supply. That shifts the economics even where total TREO grades stay moderate, and it places the project within the range of commercially interesting deposits before resource definition work has even begun.

Seven holes still to report, and what investors should watch for

As of 16 September 2026, assays remain pending from the seven other Phase 1 holes, including SEM003, SEM004, SEM006, SEM008 and SEM010, covering a combined 1,479.4 metres of core. That is more than four times the depth of SEM005 alone.

Crucially, these holes were designed to target the gravity anomalies more directly than SEM005 did. They will test whether the grades seen at the structural margin hold, or improve, as drilling moves toward the anomaly core. This is the genuine test of scale, not a confirmation exercise.

Semarule is one of five projects in Eastport’s Botswana portfolio:

• Matsitama: copper, the company’s most advanced asset.
• Selebi East: nickel, copper and cobalt.
• Foley: uranium.
• Keng: nickel, copper and platinum group elements.
• Semarule: rare earth elements.

Combined historical and current expenditure across these five assets is approaching CAD$20 million, a figure that signals the company’s commitment to the jurisdiction.

For context, Eastport shares closed at C$0.43 on 14 September 2026 on the TSXV, against a 52-week high of C$1.25 reached on 29 January 2026. That is market context only, not an investment recommendation.

When the remaining results arrive, three technical benchmarks are worth applying to each release:

1. Whether grades at the anomaly-core holes exceed the margin grades returned by SEM005.
2. Whether the MREO ratio holds above 25% across additional holes.
3. Whether the visual indicators, fenite alteration, apatite and calcite veining, correlate with assay-confirmed high-grade zones.

Those criteria come straight from the campaign’s own design logic, and they give readers a way to judge each release on its technical merits rather than on headline numbers alone.

What these first results establish, and what must still be proven

Two things are true at once here, and holding both is the honest way to read SEM005. A first-hole intercept of 2.52% TREO over 7.5 metres, with a peak of 5.95% TREO over 2.5 metres, sits within the range of globally significant early-stage rare earth results. For scale, American Rare Earths’ Wyoming hole HC24-RM035 averaged 4,393 ppm TREO over 299.1 metres, a different style of deposit but a useful benchmark for what serious intercepts look like.

The other truth is that the distance between one high-grade hole and a defined economic resource remains substantial. Three uncertainties must be resolved before Semarule can approach resource status:

• Geological continuity: whether mineralisation extends coherently across the 15-square-kilometre target area.
• Grade variability: whether grades hold from the structural margin through to the anomaly core.
• Metallurgical recovery: whether the heavy rare earth fractions, particularly dysprosium and terbium, can be economically separated.

The jurisdiction supports the effort. Botswana is a politically stable, mining-friendly country with a publicly stated strategy to diversify beyond diamonds, and the Botswana Geoscience Institute specifically flagged Semarule in its 2020 national survey. Regional comparators such as Tsodilo Resources’ Gcwihaba conceptual target of 81-97 Mt at 0.05-1.49% TREO hint at the scale potential the wider area may hold.

Botswana also maintains a rigorous permitting framework, requiring environmental authorisation, archaeological clearance and community approvals before mining licences are granted. New rare earth supply typically takes up to a decade to move from exploration to production.

The single most useful takeaway is this: SEM005 has established a genuine exploration target worth pursuing, not a resource. The seven remaining holes will determine whether that target has the geographic continuity to matter commercially.

For readers wanting to understand the specific technical and regulatory process that sits between a first-hole result and a formal resource classification, our dedicated guide to mineral resource estimation covers the five steps from geological modelling through JORC-compliant reporting, including what grade continuity thresholds and minimum drill density are typically required.

This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice. Investors should conduct their own research and consult with financial professionals before making investment decisions.

Past performance does not guarantee future results. Financial projections are subject to market conditions and various risk factors. These statements are speculative and subject to change based on market developments and company performance.