The playbook — rare earths · August 31, 2026
Defense Metals drills 65 m at 2.86% TREO inside Wicheeda pit
Infill holes near Prince George intersected 65 metres of rare earths, with a 20-metre core running double the deposit's usual grade.
Defense Metals reported drill results from its Wicheeda rare-earth project near Prince George, British Columbia, on August 31, 2026. One hole cut 65 metres grading 2.86% TREO — total rare-earth oxide, the share of the rock that is sellable rare earths, here almost three parts in a hundred. Inside that run sat a richer 20-metre core at 6.15% TREO, roughly double. This was infill drilling: eleven holes punched inside the pit that the 2025 pre-feasibility study already outlined, and the company says all eleven hit mineralization.
Rare earths are quoted differently from gold. There is no gram-per-tonne here; the honest yardstick is percent-metres — grade multiplied by thickness. That gives 185.9 percent-metres for the full 65-metre run and 123 for the high-grade core. For context, Wicheeda typically runs 2 to 3% TREO, and 6% zones are the upper end of what this deposit produces. So the point of infill work isn’t to make the deposit bigger — it’s to prove the ore is continuous and consistent enough to move a chunk of it from the “inferred” bin to the firmer “indicated” bin. That reclassification is what feeds a Feasibility Study. Behind the drill is CEO Mark Tory, who ran the A$70 million Browns Range rare-earth pilot plant in Western Australia — a build that never reached commercial production. The company closed what it described as an oversubscribed C$16.15 million placement in late 2025, and Export Development Canada issued a letter of interest for up to US$250 million in potential debt, though no binding commitment is on record.
Here’s what stays open. Ten of the thirty-one holes in the 2026 program are still awaiting assays, due in coming weeks per the release. The press release itself is truncated mid-sentence, so only the headline numbers for one hole (WI26-96) are actually legible — the other ten reported holes can’t be reviewed here. True width isn’t stated, meaning we don’t know how much of that 65 metres is real thickness versus drilling at an angle. The cut-off grade, the compositing interval, the lab QA/QC steps, and the qualified person behind the numbers all sit outside the legible text. And the split between the valuable magnet elements — neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, terbium — and the total isn’t given, so the value inside the grade is unknown. No return data was supplied, so relative strength can’t be judged.