Volta Metals Drills Unprecedented 688m of Continuous Gallium and Rare Earths
CEO.CA Jun 18, 2026 6:46
Summary
Volta Metals' Springer project in Ontario returned 688 metres of continuous gallium and rare earths, among the widest carbonatite intercepts, the CEO says.
Gallium — used in new generation semiconductors for its fast electrical response — comes almost entirely from China, leaving Western buyers scrambling for supply.
Drilling shows what is in the ground, metallurgical testing shows what you can actually recover and what it earns, and both landed within a week.
A PEA (Preliminary Economic Assessment — an early look at whether a project can pay off) and a gallium resource are both due in 2026.
The CEO ranks Springer in North America's top ten for carbonatite rare earths, with road, power and proximity to Sudbury already in place.
Kerem Usenmez's takeaways
- Top takeaway He argues the 688-metre intercept, the positive recovery work and the growing resource feed into a PEA later in 2026 that he expects to move the company into a different level.
- He attributes the project's ability to advance to the site's clean mineralogy and geology, and calls this drill intercept and its mineralization unusually special.
- On industry and financing conditions, he says the company is de-risking one step at a time with some steps running in parallel, and that each de-risking step is where value is unlocked and outside interest should grow.
- He frames gallium as a strategic differentiator: because China controls production and the Western supply chain is being built out, he argues being first to a Canadian gallium resource will be important.
- He says the sequencing of the resource update against the PEA depends on laboratory assay turnaround, and that the resource may be announced earlier or together with the PEA.