Site visit: Saga races to define Labrador rare earths find

Northeast Labrador – In a small, treeless valley in remote Labrador, a camp of white tents is abuzz with activity as people scurry around to support the larger effort of exploring the rare earths sitting just below the surface.

There’s a sense of urgency in the Saga Metals (TSXV: SAGA; US-OTC: SAGMF) camp, where young geologists examine cores freshly drilled by rotating crews working day and night on a nearby plateau, and helicopters drop off supplies for the latest arrivals on their weeks-long shifts. Wolverine is 12 km west of the Atlantic Ocean, and 240 km north of Labrador’s largest community, Happy Valley-Goose Bay.

“Geologically, Wolverine has massive upside in exploration potential,” Michael Garagan, Saga’s chief geological officer and director, told The Northern Miner inside a tent during a September visit.

“If we can continue to prove the size of it, it would have a serious impact on Labrador, especially for the north coast. There’s Vale’s (NYSE: VALE) Voisey’s Bay in the north, and Rio Tinto’s (LSE, ASX, NYSE: RIO) IOC mine in Labrador City – those are your only producing mines at the moment. If we could move this forward even close to that, we’d bring quite a bit of employment and hopefully a spotlight onto the province for its critical mineral potential.”

Watch a video of the visit

As Western governments rush to secure domestic supplies of metals needed for technology, Wolverine emerges as another potential source to feed that demand with potentially heavy rare earths. The project also further solidifies Saga’s profile as a critical metals explorer in Labrador where iron ore has led mineral production for decades.

Drill baby, drill

The ink just dried on Saga’s $1-million cash and shares July acquisition of private explorer Catalyst Rare Metals – who owned Wolverine – and the company already plans at least 3,000 metres of diamond drilling this year before winter sets in. It has drilled about 500 metres across three holes since drilling started in late August.

The Geological Survey of Newfoundland and Labrador first identified rare earths at the site in 1991. Altius Minerals (TSX: ALS) staked what it called the Nuiklavik project in 2006 before selling it to Rare Element Resources (US-OTC: REEMF) in 2010. Rare Element later allowed the claims to lapse, and Viridian Metals (CSE: VRDN; US-OTC: VIRMF) acquired the Wolverine property in 2022 and started the first modern drilling in 2023. Viridian spun it out into a company that was renamed Catalyst in 2025.

Saga’s program aims to confirm continuity of grades that Catalyst encountered in the 817 metres it drilled last year. Highlights comprise hole WOLRC25-003 that returned 48.8 metres grading 0.77% total rare earth oxides (TREO) from 1.5 metres depth, including 18.3 metres at 1.06% TREO. Hole WOLRC25-006 cut 38.1 metres grading 0.71% TREO from surface, including 4.6 metres at 1.53% TREO, with a 1.5 to 3-metre portion grading 2.03% TREO, Saga reported in July.

Heavy rare earth oxides also averaged 24% to 28% of TREO in Catalyst’s drilling and surface sampling, Saga said. Heavy rare earths, such as dysprosium and terbium are used in high performance magnets.

However, Catalyst’s rotary drilling went no deeper than 50 metres, while Saga’s first hole went down 182 metres.

Wolverine is early stage for rare earths development in Canada, where there are no producing rare earths mines and only one project – Defense Metals’ (TSXV: DEFN) Wicheeda in British Columbia – has advanced to the preliminary feasibility study stage. Search Minerals’ (TSXV: SMY) Deep Fox/Foxtot in southeast Labrador is the only project Atlantic Canada to advance to the preliminary economic assessment stage.

Shallow and large

But Wolverine’s deposit stands out because its surface host rock layer – mineralized volcanic tuff formed more than 1 billion years ago – dips gently at about 20 degrees and goes down just 25 to 50 metres across 26 sq. km.

“That makes for an excellent low cost/low strip ratio mining target,” Garagan said.  

Wolverine sits on the same Labrador-Greenland alkaline/peralkaline rare earth elements province as Critical Metals’ (Nasdaq: CRML) Tanbreez deposit in Greenland, and Torngat Metals’ Strange Lake, just across the Labrador border in northern Quebec. A resource for Wolverine remains to prove it, but it could host heavy rare earths comparable to those projects’ indicated resources showing heavy rare earths content of 24% to 39%.  

Asked when the company is targeting an initial resource for Wolverine, Garagan couldn’t specify.

“We are only three holes into this program,” he said. “There’s a lot more to learn before we commit to a date for a resource.”

Connecting Wolverine

Like many critical metal projects in Canada, Wolverine lacks road and power connections. The nearest all-season road is far to the south in Happy Valley-Goose Bay and while the town of Hopedale – 50 km east – has ferry access, a road would have to be built to connect Wolverine to tidewater if it becomes a mine.

The federal First and Last Mile Fund offers up to $1.5 billion for mining and road projects and could be an option for roads to Wolverine.

“We’re still a good year away from really being able to talk about those components of the project more,” Garagan said. “We are still working on identifying ore bodies.”

Case for rare earths

Whether early-stage or advanced, rare earth explorers such as Saga face volatile and opaque pricing because the metals lack transparent exchange-traded benchmarks and China dominates global processing and supply

Garagan acknowledges that it’s much easier for an explorer to raise money for a gold project, but the wider political momentum around rare earths suggests change could be approaching.

“We still see that there’s changing sentiments,” he said. “I don’t know if the markets have fully caught up to those changes yet. The changing atmosphere around the industry and the changing involvement of nations around the globe on how we look at critical minerals.”

Saga shares traded at 47¢ apiece on Friday in Toronto, valuing the company at $49.9 million. The stock has traded in a 12-month range of 22¢ to 98¢.