Overview
Filled cells are the four magnet metals. They are why anyone drills a carbonatite. Tundulu's historical basket runs about 13 % heavy rare earth oxides, with dysprosium and terbium together at roughly 2.5 %, unusually high for a light-REE-dominant carbonatite.
What this is
Tundulu is a carbonatite ring complex about 5 km across in the Phalombe District of southern Malawi, held by AuKing Mining under exploration licence EL 0731/24. It has been mapped since 1962, drilled twice for other reasons, and never drilled deep.
For most of its life the interesting fact about Tundulu was that 24 historical holes stopped while still inside mineralisation, eight of them above 2 % TREO, because the rigs were chasing phosphate or ran out of rod. The 2026 program was the first attempt to find the bottom of the system. On 14 September 2026 it produced the project's first modern assays, and they hold up.
91.5 km²EL 0731/24
~5 kmGarson ring complex
6Carbonatite hills
1Meaningfully drilled
8,207 mAll historical drilling
~50 mAverage 1988 hole depth
What the old data shows
- Two intercepts above 4 % TREO from two independent operators: JMT-17 at 4.11 % over 13.9 m and TU014 at 4.03 % over 30 m from surface. In JMT-17 the grade rose from 0.65 % to 4.11 % as the hole went down, and then the rig stopped.
- A heavy-REE-rich basket: HREO averaging 13 % of contained oxide, Dy + Tb at about 2.5 %, hosted in synchysite and fluorapatite.
- Low radioactivity, at weighted averages of 18.7 ppm uranium and 123.5 ppm thorium. Below NORM thresholds, which matters a great deal for permitting, shipping and finding a separator willing to take the concentrate.
- Phosphate as a genuine second product: up to 97 m @ 14.4 % P₂O₅ from surface, over a historical non-JORC phosphate resource of ~900 kt @ 22 % P₂O₅ defined in the 1970s.
- A Japanese government survey ranked the ground before anyone owned it. In 1987 JICA put Tundulu in the top four of 25 sectors, listed it first, found it anomalous in all fifteen carbonatite pathfinder elements where Kangankunde was not, and measured its strongest anomalies as dysprosium, terbium, yttrium and niobium. It then drilled and published a preliminary 0.6 Mt at 2.09 % REO, comparing the grade with Bayan Obo. See the JICA 1987 panel for the scanned pages.
Where 2026 got to
The maiden program was announced at 10,000 m and expanded towards ~15,000 m across roughly 50 targets after drone magnetics and LiDAR redrew the system. As at September 2026:
- 4,300 m of RC across 31 holes, completed 31 July 2026. Carbonatite logged in 28 of them, more than 2,100 m of it in total, with seven holes carrying over 100 m of carbonatite.
- Carbonatite hit at Kamilala Hill and Tundulu Hill as well as Nathace, covering three of the six interpreted complexes, including a step-out 800 m east. Kamilala had never been drilled; its first two holes, sited off the airborne magnetics rather than off old workings, both hit.
- Twin holes beside historical collars returned lithologies within a few metres of the depths previously reported, which matters because no earlier explorer kept any chips or core.
- Two diamond holes both drilled straight through their planned 300 m depth because the rock kept going: 26NH032 to 510.6 m and 26NH023 to 400.4 m. Both ended in carbonatite, and core from the last five metres of 26NH032 shows it continuing. The system is open at depth, which means later holes have room to add to the model rather than merely confirm it.
- First assays reported 14 September 2026 from four RC holes: 91 m @ 1.51 % TREO from 40 m in 26NH005, 80 m @ 1.54 % from surface in 26NH029, and 20 m @ 2.06 % from 113 m in 26NH004. Every announced intercept reconciles against the per-metre table published with the release.
- Heavy rare earths confirmed in the assays, not just inferred from old sampling: HREE+Y to roughly 8 % of TREO through the mineralised zones, and 8 m at 16.09 % HREE+Y/TREO in 26NH005. The elevated heavy grades track P₂O₅, which points at the apatite.
- Assays for the remaining RC holes are in the pipeline. All 4,500 samples have Malawi export permits, and the batches are at Intertek Perth, being assessed, or in preparation, with results expected to flow over the coming weeks. The diamond core has been prioritised but not yet assayed.
Where it now stands. The first four holes have assayed at grades and widths comparable with the best of the historical record, from holes deliberately sited to test that record. AuKing has begun formal work on a maiden resource estimate, targeted before the end of 2026, and on 15 September its board approved planning for a 1,000 m diamond hole to test the system far below anything drilled at Tundulu before. The remaining 27 RC holes and all four diamond holes are still to report, and there is still no resource.
Getting there
All-weather roads connect the licence to Zomba and Blantyre through Migowi, about 25 km away and on the national grid.
Geology
Setting
Tundulu sits in the Chilwa Alkaline Province, a Mesozoic alkaline-carbonatite district in southern Malawi that also hosts Kangankunde and Songwe Hill. Garson's 1962 mapping for the Geological Survey of Nyasaland remains the reference description, and it identified three nested igneous centres:
- Centre 1. A circular fenitisation aureole around a syenite plug roughly 2 km in diameter.
- Centre 2. The carbonatite ring structure centred on Nathace Hill, 500–600 m across. Wrench faulting displaced its western half about 250 m north.
- Centre 3. Small plugs and thin sheets of meta-nephelinite and beforsite, emplaced after that faulting.
What carries the rare earths
Two carbonatite types, and they behave differently:
- Rare earth carbonatite. The higher TREO grades. The dominant REE mineral is synchysite, in needles 10–50 µm long. Fine, but a well-understood flotation target.
- Apatite carbonatite. Grades 5–30 % P₂O₅, with heavy rare earths sitting inside the apatite lattice. This is the phosphate co-product, and it is also where a lot of the HREE value lives.
Mineralised breccia and agglomerate fill the inner vent. Strip logs show apatite and HREE content tracking each other closely down-hole, which is a useful thing in a deposit, because one assay predicts the other. Gangue is quartz, ankerite and calcite.
What 2026 changed
A drone-borne magnetics and LiDAR survey over roughly 330 line-km reinterpreted Tundulu from a surface-mapped occurrence into a geophysically constrained alkaline-carbonatite system, with the interpreted footprint materially larger than Garson's dome and with drill-ready targets under shallow post-mineral sedimentary cover. A former senior Rio Tinto geophysicist peer-reviewed the interpretation.
Turn on both ring layers on the map to see the difference between the 1962 dome and the 2026 interpreted extent.
Targets
- Nathace Hill. South-west extensions, the southern corridor, twin holes to validate the historical data, and deep holes for vertical extent.
- Tundulu Hill. Fence holes under shallow historic intersections, testing rock chips up to 6.07 % TREO. Carbonatite confirmed here in 2026.
- Kamilala Hill. One of Garson's three principal carbonatite-bearing hills. Carbonatite confirmed in 2026 RC drilling.
- Makhanga, Namuka, Chigwakwalu. Mapped carbonatite highs, effectively untested by modern drilling.
Drilling
Three programs, three different questions
JICA, 1988. The drilling arm of a three-phase Japanese government program that screened 30,000 km² and 25 sectors before choosing where to put a rig. 24 diamond holes for 1,204.8 m, average depth 50 m, a rig limit rather than a geological decision. Tundulu got the largest survey area of the three Chilwa carbonatite sectors: 7.5 km² and 243 ore samples, against 3.2 km² at Songwe Hill and 0.8 km² with no drilling at Kangankunde.
Optichem / Mota-Engil, 2014–15. 55 holes for 7,002 m, averaging 127 m, deepest 221 m. This crew was looking for phosphate. The rare earth intercepts are, in a real sense, a by-product of someone else's search.
AuKing, 2026. The first program designed to test the REE system on its own terms, and the first to go deep.
24 holes ended in mineralisation. Eight of those were still above 2 % TREO when they stopped. Use the "Flag holes open at depth" control on the map to pick them out.
The first assays
On 14 September 2026 AuKing reported assays from the first four RC holes. They validate the historical record and, in places, beat it.
26NH00591 m @ 1.51 % TREO
From 40 m, including 43 m @ 2.00 % from 77 m and 15 m @ 3.40 % from 90 m. Drilled beside historical ground to test whether the old record could be trusted.
26NH02980 m @ 1.54 % TREO
From surface, including 30 m @ 2.00 % from surface, 11 m @ 4.33 % from 2 m, 26 m @ 2.03 % from 53 m and 12 m @ 2.74 % from 56 m. Mineralised from the first metre.
26NH00420 m @ 2.06 % TREO
From 113 m, including 12 m @ 3.24 % from 113 m, and separately 10 m @ 2.86 % from 84 m. This is the twin of historical hole TU071.
26NH014step-out
Collared well south of Nathace to test a magnetic low. Several mineralised intervals, at lower grade, inside the anomaly. No headline intercept was quoted.
Set against the historical best of 41.1 m @ 3.68 % and 30 m @ 4.03 %, these are comparable grades over comparable widths, from holes sited to check the old work rather than to flatter it. Two of the three cored the mineralisation from surface or near it.
The whole record, metre by metre
Annexure B of that release publishes every one-metre sample. Below is the full downhole profile for each of the four holes: TREO grade as bars, the HREE+Y share of the basket as the green trace, and the announced intercepts bracketed down the right edge.
What the profile shows that a highlight box cannot is how the grade is distributed. 26NH029 is mineralised continuously from surface. 26NH005 carries a broad zone through the middle of the hole. 26NH004 has its best rock at the bottom, still going when the hole stopped at 145 m. And the green trace runs opposite to the bars in places: the heavy share tends to peak where TREO does not, which is the apatite signature rather than the carbonatite one.
Heavy rare earths, where they sit
Across the mineralised zones HREE+Y runs to roughly 8 % of TREO, with discrete intervals far above that. 26NH005 returned 8 m @ 16.09 % HREE+Y/TREO from 68 m, 7 m @ 12.75 % from 80 m and 6 m @ 8.88 % from 120 m. 26NH029 returned 42 m @ 11.46 % from 13 m, 4 m @ 9.45 % from 60 m and 12 m @ 8.54 % from 68 m. Over their full intercepts the two holes average 2.92 % and 4.53 % HREE+Y/TREO.
The elevated heavy grades track P₂O₅ across all three holes, which is consistent with the HREE-bearing apatite documented at Tundulu since the 1970s. That is the phosphate co-product and the heavy rare earth story turning out to be the same rock.
One correction. The HREE column printed for 26NH014 in Annexure B does not reconcile with the element data in the same rows; it runs about ten percentage points low. The profile above recomputes it from the reported oxides for that hole only. The other three holes reconcile exactly, as do all eleven announced TREO intercepts.
How the samples were assayed
Worth knowing, because rare earth assays are easy to get wrong. Some REE minerals are refractory, so a partial digestion undercounts them. AuKing used lithium-borate fusion, a total digestion, with preparation at Intertek's Kitwe laboratory in Zambia and the fusion and finish at Intertek Perth by ICP-OES and ICP-MS.
- Certified reference materials (AMIS0356 and AMIS0939) inserted one in every twenty samples, and coarse blanks one in twenty.
- QAQC samples made up 12.5 % of everything submitted, and the Competent Person reports the returns within acceptable limits.
- Continuous 1 m sampling irrespective of lithology, riffle split to 2 to 4 kg, with a documented spear protocol where wet or clay-rich ground defeated the splitter.
- Reported intercepts are downhole lengths. True widths are not yet known, and no top cut or cut-off grade was applied.
What the 2026 rigs found
The hit rate held as the rigs moved away from Nathace. At the 27-hole mark it stood at 26 of 27, and every hole drilled into the Kamilala and Tundulu Hill step-outs came back with carbonatite, including multiple intrusions on both the western and eastern sectors of Tundulu Hill, 800 m east of the historical ground.
Drilling has now delineated carbonatite across three of the six interpreted complexes: Nathace, Kamilala and Tundulu Hill. Makhanga, Namuka and Chigwakwalu have still never been drill-tested. Cumulative logged carbonatite passed 2,000 m at the 27-hole mark and exceeded 2,100 m by the end of the RC phase.
Three things from the first half of the program are worth separating out.
- The old data checks out. The first two holes, 26NH004 and 26NH005, were deliberately collared beside historical holes to test whether the inherited record could be trusted. No previous explorer had kept any RC chips or core, so there was nothing physical to re-log. Mafic dolerite intersections came in within a few metres of the depths previously reported.
- Kamilala delivered on its first test. Two RC holes for 298 m into a target that had never been drilled, sited off the airborne magnetics rather than off historical workings, both intersecting carbonatite. That is the exploration model verifying itself.
- The system is bigger than the old footprint. Carbonatite was logged well west and north-east of Nathace Hill, in ground historical drilling never touched.
Managing Director Paul Williams has framed the striking feature of the early drilling as carbonatite appearing across almost all holes, not just around Nathace, and Tundulu therefore having potential to be a much larger system than first thought.
An early field signal, heavily qualified. A video field update from senior geologist Derek Halford, posted to the company's social media rather than released to the ASX, reported portable XRF readings taken during drilling detecting rare earth elements in quantities of interest at Kamilala and Tundulu Hill.
Portable XRF is a screening tool used at the rig. It is indicative, not quantitative at these levels, and it is not a substitute for laboratory assay. Treat it as a pointer that the newly confirmed carbonatite may carry mineralisation rather than simply being favourable host rock, and nothing more than that.
Switch on the hole-trace layer to see collar azimuth and the surface projection of each angled hole.
Down to 510.6 m
Diamond drilling opened with 26NH032, a hole already drilled by RC to 150 m. The plan was a 150 m diamond tail for 300 m total. Logging kept finding carbonatite past that point, so the hole was extended, and it finished at 510.62 m. That is 210 m beyond plan, on a rig that costs real money per metre and is not drilling another target while it sits there. Paying for those metres is a stronger signal than any wording in a highlights box.
How it finished matters more than how deep it went. Core photographed from roughly 505.2 m to the end of hole shows variably altered carbonatite and carbonatite breccias running to the bottom. The hole was stopped because the program had the data it needed at this stage, not because the geology ran out.
Board approved, not yet drilled
1,000 m
On 15 September 2026 the AuKing board approved planning for a single diamond hole to roughly 1,000 m, to test the system at significantly greater depth. It sits inside the current drilling budget rather than requiring new funding.
For scale: that is nearly double 26NH032, which stopped at 510.62 m with carbonatite still in the core, and it would be the deepest hole ever drilled at Tundulu by a factor of about seven against the 1988 JICA average of 50 m. No collar, no timing and no rig allocation have been published.
Every meaningful grade number in this project's history comes from a shallow hole, and many of those holes stopped while still in mineralisation. 26NH032 is the first to go looking underneath, and it found carbonatite for its entire length without reaching the bottom of the system. The company's own framing shifted accordingly: the surface footprint initially strengthened the district-scale interpretation, and the depth extension now indicates the complex may be significantly larger than previously interpreted. The model grew on both axes at once.
One detail to watch, and to not over-read. Red-orange alteration phases are visible in the core at around 449 m downhole. They remain subject to detailed logging and analytical confirmation. Alteration is not mineralisation, and visual observation is not assay.
Where the samples actually are
The assay pipeline crosses three countries, which is most of the reason it has been slow. The position as at the 17 August 2026 release:
1,270At Intertek Perth, being assayed
4,165Export approved, 7 permits
357Still with the MMRA
CoreSampling started, none reported
The first two RC batches are in Perth with priority processing requested for the first four drillholes. The bulk of the rest is at or in transit to Intertek's sample preparation facility in Zambia, with one permit covering 357 samples still with the Malawi regulator.
Diamond core is logged, photographed and cut lengthways, with half submitted for analysis and half retained in labelled trays. Sampling runs on nominal 1 m intervals, flexing between 0.5 m and 1.5 m to honour geological and mineralisation boundaries, and core stays under company supervision through to AuKing's core processing and storage facility at Zomba. Thompson Drilling is running the diamond rig on NQ-diameter core. None of this is glamorous, and all of it is what a defensible resource estimate is built from.
Best historical intercepts
AuKing cites three headline historical intercepts when describing the project: 41 m at 3.7 % TREO from 8 m, 35 m at 2.7 % TREO from 15 m, and 30 m at 4.03 % TREO from surface. The first and third are JMT-22 and TU014 below. The hole behind the second is not identified in the public summaries. The 2026 assays above now sit alongside these rather than beneath them.
Surface sampling
| Sample | TREO | Detail |
|---|
| 7Y386 | 6.41 % | JICA 1988, Nathace Hill. Highest single surface sample |
| 7Y196 | 6.07 % | JICA 1988, Tundulu Hill east flank, 5.6 % P₂O₅. Highest grade from a hill nobody had drilled |
| TUTR10 | ≤ 3.35 % | Trench, Oct 2024. 63 samples over 83 m; P₂O₅ to 27.5 %; HREO ~13 % of basket |
| Sat-1 | 3.10 % | Kamilala Hill satellite target |
| BC2B | 2.56 % | DY6 reconnaissance, carbonatite |
| 7Y380 | 2.06 % | JICA, carbonatite breccia |
| Tundu-1 | 1.80 % | DY6 reconnaissance, brecciated fenite |
Of 85 rock chips assayed by JICA, 25 came back above 1 % TREO.
The 1989 historical estimate
From that drilling on the eastern slope of Nathace Hill, JICA published a preliminary estimate of about 0.6 Mt at 2.09 % REO across three ore bodies, plus roughly 0.5 Mt at 17.0 % P₂O₅. It is a keyhole number: one hillside, outcropping zones only, a 1 % REO cut-off and an assumed 50 m depth limit, and the report says plainly that it cannot be compared with operating mines. Songwe's equivalent 1988 estimate of 1.4 Mt has since become 21 Mt. The full context, with the scanned pages, is in the JICA 1987 panel.
The 2026 program
31 holesRC, complete 31 Jul 2026
4,300 mRC metres
28 / 31Holes with carbonatite
2,100 m+Cumulative logged carbonatite
510.6 m26NH032, ended in carbonatite
400.4 m26NH023, ended in carbonatite
Both diamond holes were planned to 300 m and both were extended because logging kept finding carbonatite. Core from them is earmarked for metallurgical and mineralogical testwork as well as assay.
Samples travel Malawi to Zambia to Intertek in Perth. Management has publicly acknowledged shareholder frustration at how long that chain has taken, while arguing it has still moved faster than the regional norm. The current position is set out below.
Surveyed collars
Collar positions for the first 21 RC holes were published in the announcement of 2 July 2026 and are plotted here at their surveyed coordinates, converted from WGS 84 UTM Zone 36 South. Holes prefixed 26NH sit in the Nathace Hill area, 26KH at Kamilala. The remaining ten holes of the 31-hole RC program are not yet published at collar level.
Grid is WGS 84 UTM Zone 36 South. Reported depths are downhole; true widths are not yet known. Everything else on this map, including geological outlines and historical collars, remains schematic and compiled from public releases rather than survey data.
JICA 1987
A government survey got here first
Between 1986 and 1988 the Japan International Cooperation Agency and the Metal Mining Agency of Japan ran a three-phase exploration program across southern Malawi: 30,000 km² of ground, 25 target sectors, roughly 1,000 geochemical samples assayed for 60 elements, and drilling of the best targets in the final phases.
It covered the same ground that now carries Kangankunde and Songwe Hill. Its conclusions about Tundulu were reached decades before any current owner held the licence, which makes them useful in a way that company-sponsored work is not.
Tap any excerpt to read it full size.
Four of 25 sectors made the top tier
Combining geology and geochemistry, Phase 1 placed only four sectors in its highest category, those having high potentiality of the carbonatite deposit: Tundulu, Songwe, Chilwa Island and Kangankunde. Tundulu was listed first, and was one of only four sectors where massive, large-scale carbonatite was confirmed at all.
On geochemistry, Tundulu outranked Kangankunde
Fifteen elements were chosen as carbonatite pathfinders: Ce, Dy, Eu, La, Lu, Nd, Nb, P, Sm, Sr, Tb, Th, U, Yb and Y. Three sectors returned anomalous values in every one of the fifteen: Tundulu, Songwe and Chilwa Island. Kangankunde sat a tier below, anomalous in some elements but not all.
Tundulu ran heavy where Kangankunde ran light
The detail matters more than the ranking. Tundulu's strong anomalies were dysprosium, terbium, yttrium and niobium: three high-value heavy rare earths plus a critical mineral in its own right. Kangankunde's strong anomalies were cerium, lanthanum, strontium and uranium, the light-REE signature that defines its monazite orebody today.
The heavy-leaning character now reported at Tundulu was measured by an independent government survey in 1987, well before anyone had a reason to want that answer.
The two were benchmarked against each other
Each sector chapter independently described the other as its peer. The Tundulu chapter assessed its carbonatites as being as large as those at Chilwa Island and Kangankunde. The Kangankunde chapter described its own carbonatite as one of the large deposits alongside Tundulu. In 1987 these were treated as equivalent-class systems.
Phase 1 said: drill Tundulu
The closing recommendation was explicit. Geological, geochemical, radiometric and trench surveys plus drilling, to confirm the dimensions, grades and underground conditions of the carbonatites at the promising sectors, Tundulu among them.
Then it drilled, and invoked Bayan Obo
Phases 2 and 3 drilled three of the four top sectors: Songwe, Tundulu and Chilwa Island. Kangankunde was the exception. It was never drilled by JICA.
AuKing reproduced the Phase 2 survey table itself on 15 September 2026, and the split is stark. Tundulu: 7.5 km² surveyed, 500 m of trenching, 24 holes for 1,204.8 m, 243 ore samples. Songwe: 3.2 km², 11 holes for 558.95 m. Kangankunde: 0.8 km², no holes at all. Tundulu took more than two thirds of the drilling across the whole program.
At Tundulu, drilling on the eastern slope of Nathace Hill defined rare earth and phosphorus zones, and the 1989 consolidated report published a preliminary estimate of about 0.6 Mt at 2.09 % REO across three ore bodies, one of them above 3 % REO. The report's own comparison was to Bayan Obo, still the largest rare earth mine in the world.
The tonnage is small by construction, and the report says so. It covered one slope of one hill, assumed mineralisation extends just 50 m below surface, and counted only outcropping zones above a 1 % REO cut-off. On those assumptions, the report cautions, the figure cannot be compared with real mines.
How conservative that method was sits one valley over. Songwe's equivalent 1988 estimate was 1.4 Mt at 1.74 % REO. Modern drilling has since turned that same hill into a 21 Mt measured and indicated resource. Tundulu, which JICA graded higher than Songwe, has still never had a modern resource published.
A phosphate co-product above Araxá
The same drilling defined a separate phosphorus estimate of about half a million tonnes at 17.0 % P₂O₅, which the report benchmarks above Brazil's Araxá mine at 15.01 %, and describes as having high potential to be exploited. Its final recommendation for Tundulu was further detailed drilling to define the extent, reserve and grade of the mineralised zones, aiming at increasing the reserves. That is close to a description of the program running now.
How the survey saw today's three projects
| JICA 1986–88 | Tundulu | Kangankunde | Songwe |
|---|
| Evaluation | Top tier,
listed first | Top tier | Top tier |
| Geochemistry | All 15
elements | Some only | All 15
elements |
Strong
anomalies | Dy, Tb, Y, Nb
(heavy) | Ce, La, Sr, U
(light) | Dy, Eu, Sm,
Tb, Yb, Y, Th, U |
| JICA drilling | Drilled | Not drilled | Drilled |
Estimate
published | 0.6 Mt
@ 2.09 % REO | None | 1.4 Mt
@ 1.74 % REO |
| Status 2026 | Maiden REE
drilling | 261 Mt,
building | 21 Mt M+I,
DFS done |
The first five rows paraphrase the 1987 and 1989 reports. The last row is publicly disclosed project status as at September 2026 and does not come from them.
The pattern is hard to miss. The program's preliminary numbers badly understated Songwe, whose 1.4 Mt keyhole estimate became 21 Mt. Kangankunde, which it could not drill at all, became 261 Mt. Tundulu is the sector it listed first, graded above Songwe, and compared with Bayan Obo, and it is the one whose modern drilling chapter is being written right now.
Cautionary statement. The above summarises the Report on the Cooperative Mineral Exploration in the Chilwa Alkaline Area, Republic of Malawi, Phase 1 (March 1987) and Consolidated Report (March 1989), by the Japan International Cooperation Agency and the Metal Mining Agency of Japan.
These are historical exploration results and historical estimates of mineralisation. They predate the JORC Code 2012 and were not prepared in accordance with it. A Competent Person has not done sufficient work to classify them as Mineral Resources or Ore Reserves under JORC, they must not be relied upon as such, and it is uncertain that further exploration will result in the estimation of Mineral Resources.
The 1989 estimates were expressly preliminary: mineralisation was assumed to extend only 50 m below surface, a 1 % REO cut-off was applied to outcropping zones on one slope of Nathace Hill, and the report itself states the figures cannot be compared with operating mines. The Bayan Obo and Araxá comparisons are statements by the 1989 report's authors, not by AuKing or by this page. Geochemical anomalies are statistical classifications relative to the survey's own sample population, not measurements of grade. Kangankunde and Songwe Hill are owned by unrelated third parties.
Sources. The reports are public via the Japanese government's JICA repository: Phase 1 part 1 and part 2, the Phase 2 report of March 1988 that AuKing cites, and the consolidated report. Excerpt images are unaltered scans reproduced for reference.
Basket
Why the mix matters more than the grade
A rare earth deposit is not valued on TREO the way a copper deposit is valued on copper. TREO is a bucket containing seventeen different metals whose prices differ by three orders of magnitude. Cerium and lanthanum are close to worthless in surplus; terbium trades for hundreds of dollars a kilogram. Two deposits at the same headline grade can be worth wildly different amounts.
Indicative oxide prices, 2026
~$97 /kgNdPr oxide, Aug 2026
~$178 /kgDysprosium oxide
~$804 /kgTerbium oxide
~$110 /kgUS DoD NdPr floor
China domestic benchmarks, except the floor, which is the reference level under the US Department of Defense arrangement with MP Materials. Material sold outside China carries a substantial premium: dysprosium has traded around $292–317/kg FOB and terbium near $1,182/kg. Prices move constantly, so treat these as a snapshot rather than a quote.
Tundulu's basket
- HREO ≈ 13 % of contained oxide on historical trench sampling, against roughly 1–3 % for a typical light-REE bastnäsite carbonatite.
- Dy + Tb ≈ 2.5 % of the basket. These are the two elements that hold magnet coercivity at high temperature, and the two most exposed to Chinese export licensing.
- Now measured rather than inferred. The September 2026 assays put HREE+Y at roughly 8 % of TREO through mineralised zones, with discrete intervals to 16 %, and show the heavy grades tracking P₂O₅ across all three assayed Nathace holes.
- Hosted in synchysite, a bastnäsite-group fluorocarbonate, in the REE carbonatite, and in fluorapatite in the apatite carbonatite, which is where much of the heavy fraction sits. AuKing has described the profile as bastnäsite and apatite carrying abundant rare earth mineralisation.
- Tusker Minerals, then DY6 Metals, reinterpreted the combined historical dataset and identified several continuous zones of high-grade mineralisation in REE-rich carbonatite and apatite, assessed as enriched in middle as well as heavy rare earths with low uranium and thorium. Middle rare earths, samarium through gadolinium, matter because europium and gadolinium sit well above the light-REE price floor.
Why AuKing acquired Machinga
Machinga, AuKing's peralkaline eudialyte project north of Zomba, runs at about 3.6 % Dy+Tb:TREO and 29 % HREO and is a peralkaline system carrying the heavies with niobium.
Two products, not one
- Rare earth concentrate. Preliminary flotation at Auralia Metallurgy in Perth during 2025, on a 120 kg composite from trench TUTR10 grading 1.88 % TREO and 9.07 % P₂O₅, recovered more than 85 % of the TREO. Sixteen tests across varied reagents, circuits and grind sizes demonstrating recovery.
- Phosphate. Intercepts to 14.4 % P₂O₅ over 97 m from surface, trench samples to 27.5 % P₂O₅, and a historical non-JORC resource of ~900 kt @ 22 % P₂O₅ plus ~1 Mt of apatite sövite above 10 % P₂O₅. Flotation recovered over 90 % of the P₂O₅, and bioavailability testing returned citric-acid solubility above 40 %, with one test at 81 %, against an industry threshold of 9.4 %. That points at a direct fertiliser product from the near-surface phosphate. Malawi imports its fertiliser.
The radioactivity question
Monazite-hosted rare earth deposits usually come with thorium, and thorium brings licensing, handling and disposal costs that have killed otherwise good projects. Tundulu's historical weighted averages, 18.7 ppm U and 123.5 ppm Th, sit well below NORM thresholds. Trench composites also returned mercury, lead and cadmium below detection.
This is the same characteristic that made Kangankunde attractive to downstream processors, and it is one of the more durable advantages in the Chilwa province.
District
Tundulu, Kangankunde and Songwe Hill
AuKing now cites Kangankunde at roughly A$1.25 b and Songwe Hill at about C$300 m, and places Songwe some 15 km south of Tundulu rather than the 35 km used elsewhere. Songwe Hill's economics, a post-tax NPV of US$339 M, an IRR of 24 % and an 18-year life, are the nearest published benchmark for what a Chilwa carbonatite can carry. All three sit in the Chilwa Alkaline Province. The distinction worth understanding is structural: Tundulu is a multi-centre ring complex containing six named carbonatite hills plus satellite dykes and plugs. Its two neighbours are each a single sub-kilometre body. Tundulu's fenite dome is about twice Kangankunde's diameter and more than three times Songwe Hill's.
That cuts both ways. A larger system is a larger exploration target, and a larger system with no resource is a long way behind two deposits that have finished feasibility studies.
| Tundulu | Kangankunde | Songwe Hill |
|---|
| Owner | AuKing (AKN) | Lindian (LIN) | Mkango (MKA) |
| System | ~5 km ring,
6 hills | ~0.7 × 0.4 km core | ~0.8 km core |
| Fenite halo | ~5 km | ~2.5 km | ~1.5 km |
| Resource | None | 261 Mt
@ ~2.19 % | 21 Mt M+I
@ 1.41 % |
| Reserve | None | 23.7 Mt
@ 2.9 % | 18.1 Mt
@ 1.16 % |
| Stage | Maiden drilling | In construction | DFS complete |
| Distance | reference | ~105 km NW | ~15 km S |
| Market cap | see Company | ~A$1.25 b | ~C$300 m |
The 1987 JICA survey ranked all three in its top tier of 25 sectors, listed Tundulu first, and separated them on geochemistry: Tundulu and Songwe were anomalous in all fifteen pathfinder elements, Kangankunde in some only. Tundulu's strong anomalies were the heavy rare earths, Kangankunde's the lights.
JICA reached its own conclusion in 1988: the Kangankunde and Tundulu carbonatites are, in its words, almost the same. It then allocated Tundulu the largest survey area of the three and drilled 24 shallow holes into it.
Malawi as a place to do this
- A functioning mining code under the Mines and Minerals Act 2023, which replaced the 2018 Act, and a district with two projects that have taken deposits through feasibility: Lindian targeting first production from Kangankunde, and Mkango with a completed DFS at Songwe.
- The Nacala corridor is built and running: 912 km of rail from Malawi to a deep-water Indian Ocean port in Mozambique, upgraded between 2017 and 2022 with financing from the African Development Bank, JICA and the World Bank. Capacity is far beyond anything a rare earth mine would need. Two of the Malawi sections, 245 km of it, were built by Mota-Engil, the same contractor that drilled Tundulu for phosphate in 2014 and 2015. Kangankunde's plan trucks concentrate to Limbe and rails it from there.
- Japan has put the corridor at the centre of its Africa infrastructure push. At TICAD 9 in August 2025 it pledged up to US$7 billion for African connectivity, US$5.5 bn through EPSA and US$1.5 bn through JICA, naming the Nacala corridor among the targets. Japanese interest is explicitly tied to Malawi's critical minerals, with Sovereign Metals' Kasiya rutile and graphite project and its planned rail spur driving much of it. A jurisdiction where a mining-led rail case is being taken seriously is a better place to be than one where it is not.
- Grid power at Migowi, about 25 km from the licence, and all-weather road access.
The market backdrop
NdPr oxide roughly doubled from about $49/kg in December 2024 to a multi-year high near $111/kg in February 2026, before easing to around $97/kg by August, below the ~$110/kg reference level established by the US Department of Defense arrangement with MP Materials. Heavy rare earths have behaved differently again, with dysprosium and terbium holding their gains through the light-REE correction.
Two structural things changed in the background. Western separation and magnet capacity now exists at commercial scale for the first time in decades, so a non-Chinese concentrate has somewhere to go. And China's export licensing regime for rare earths turned them into policy instruments, and the November 2026 review of that regime is the single largest near-term swing factor for the prices above.
Company
The company
AuKing Mining Limited is a small ASX-listed explorer, managed by Paul Williams and based in Brisbane. Tundulu became its flagship in April 2026 and it has been buying ground around it ever since.
ASX: AKNAuKing Mining Limited
~2.13 bnShares on issue, Jul 2026
A$5.0 mPlacement, oversubscribed
A$0.025Placement price, Jul 2026
Market capitalisation has moved with the share price through 2026, at roughly A$60 m around the July raise and near A$42 m at 1.8 c in August. Check a live quote rather than relying on any figure on this page.
Capital structure
- July 2026 placement: 200,000,000 shares at A$0.025 raising A$5 m, oversubscribed, plus 35,000,000 options at A$0.006 expiring 31 December 2026 issued to GBA Capital and Whairo Capital.
- 2,311,190 shares issued at A$0.025 to settle road maintenance fees at Tundulu under the Mkaka service contract.
- Issued capital of roughly 2.134 billion ordinary shares after those issues, plus unquoted options and performance rights.
- An EGM on 19 October 2026 in Brisbane seeks ratification of the placement shares, the service-contract shares and the broker options.
- This is a pre-resource explorer funding itself with equity. Further dilution should be the base case, not the exception.
The wider portfolio
AuKing has assembled a Malawi critical minerals position rather than a single asset, with Tusker Minerals on the other side of the whole lot. Two separate agreements, announced two weeks apart, do the work:
- Machinga, 4 August. A$750,000 cash and A$750,000 in shares on completion, A$1.25 m cash within 12 months, and A$1.25 m in performance shares on a 10 Mt at 0.65 % TREO resource within three years. Roughly A$4 m in total.
- Green Exploration, 18 August. The structure changed: rather than buying the Machinga licences, AuKing agreed to buy the Malawian company that holds them. Consideration is a further A$50,000 cash and A$250,000 in shares on completion, 10 million shares at A$0.025 under 12 months of escrow, A$500,000 in performance shares tied to Ngala Hill drilling, and another A$50,000 cash within three months. About A$850,000 on top of the Machinga terms, for a combined figure near A$4.85 m.
Green Exploration also holds the Tundulu licence, so the same transaction settles title to the flagship. Three of its four licences sit in southern Malawi within reach of the Zomba base: one field team, one logistics chain and one set of government relationships now cover four projects instead of one. That is the commercial argument, and it is a reasonable one for a company this size.
What comes with it
- Machinga. Heavy rare earths and niobium, 200.4 km². Covered below.
- Salambidwe. EL 0518, 24.9 km², on the Mozambique border. A ring complex roughly 6 km across of syenites and nepheline-syenites with an agglomeratic core, so a different style again to both Tundulu and Machinga. Globe rock chips returned 2.05 % TREO and, separately, 7,924 ppm Nb₂O₅ at a 33.2 % HREO:TREO ratio, with zirconium and tantalum through the same samples. DY6 collected 514 soil and rock samples across a 50 km grid in 2024 with 45 line-km of airborne EM and radiometrics, defining an eastern zone about 1,700 m long and a western trend over 2 km. It has never been drilled.
- Ngala Hill. EL 0510, 16.4 km², about 35 km south-south-west of Blantyre, near the Nacala corridor and grid power. An outcropping palladium-rich ultramafic chonolith, 2.4 by 0.7 km, with a Main Zone over roughly 2 km of strike, a massive sulphide zone and a western sill. Trenching in 1999 and 2000 returned 64 m at 1.41 g/t PGE+Au and 70 m at 1.12 g/t including 8 m at 3.3 g/t. Read the risks panel before treating those numbers as a guide to what lies beneath.
- Karonga. EL 0782/24, 36 km², about 440 km north of Lilongwe and a long way from everything else. Greenfield copper with malachite and azurite alongside sulphides in quartzite.
Ngala Hill and Karonga are earmarked for a proposed copper-focused spin-off alongside AuKing's existing copper interests. For a company holding rare earths, copper, PGE, uranium and tin, separating the copper is a rational answer to the discount that diversified juniors carry.
Outside Malawi
- Koongie Park copper-zinc-silver, Western Australia, held as a 49 % joint venture with Cobalt Blue Holdings.
- Mkuju uranium, southern Tanzania.
- Big Wilson tin-tungsten, north-western Tasmania.
Performance hurdles worth reading
Both deals put a meaningful slice of consideration behind exploration outcomes rather than signatures. Machinga's A$1.25 m converts on a JORC resource of at least 10 Mt at 0.65 % TREO within three years. Ngala Hill's A$500,000 converts only if AuKing announces any two drill intercepts within three years clearing one of: 20 m at 1.5 g/t 3E or better, 15 m at 2.0 g/t, 10 m at 2.5 g/t, or at least 20 m carrying 1.0 g/t 3E together with 0.5 % copper. Conversion is A$0.025 divided by the 90-day VWAP, capped at one ordinary share each.
Cash out the door on completion of the Green Exploration deal is A$100,000 across two instalments. Most of the value only transfers if the ground performs.
Machinga, the heavy half
Machinga is not a second Tundulu. It is a different deposit type carrying a different basket, which is rather the point of owning both.
Where Tundulu is a carbonatite ring complex, Machinga is peralkaline, on the north-eastern margin of the Zomba-Malosa intrusive complex. Rare earths sit in eudialyte, a zirconosilicate, together with bastnäsite and xenotime, inside a hydrothermal breccia striking north-west and dipping about 35° to the north-east. Mineralised zones thicken at depth and continue into the second licence. The described analogues are Strange Lake in Quebec and Bokan Mountain in Alaska.
200.4 km²EL 0529 + EL 0705
8,588 mHistorical drilling, 79 holes
~29 %HREO share of TREO
3.6 %Dy + Tb share of TREO
Globe Metals and Mining drilled 36 RC holes for 4,045 m plus 1,635 m of trenching between 2010 and 2012. DY6 Metals followed in 2023 with 35 RC holes for 3,643 m and 8 diamond holes for 900 m. The averages above were struck at a 0.25 % TREO cut-off, on hard-rock grades of 0.6 to 1.4 % TREO.
MDD00715.1 m @ 1.01 % TREO
From 23.9 m, with 0.36 % Nb₂O₅ and 27.7 % HREO. Includes 4 m @ 1.75 % TREO and 0.63 % Nb₂O₅. Mineralogy on this interval also returned 15.2 % NdPr oxide, so close to a fifth of the contained oxide is magnet metal.
MDD0065.2 m @ 1.61 % TREO
From 41.4 m, with 0.66 % Nb₂O₅ and 30.7 % HREO. Includes 1 m @ 2.67 % TREO and 1.01 % Nb₂O₅, the peak of the project.
MR0117 m @ 1.42 % TREO
From 65 m, with 0.49 % Nb₂O₅ and 29.0 % HREO.
MDD0089 m @ 1.11 % TREO
From 41 m, with 0.41 % Nb₂O₅ and 27.6 % HREO. Includes 3 m @ 1.56 % TREO at 31.0 % HREO, the strongest heavy skew in the dataset.
MR0046.1 m @ 1.09 % TREO
From 22.5 m, with 0.4 % Nb₂O₅.
MR02411 m @ 0.74 % TREO
From surface, at 27.7 % HREO.
Surface work keeps pushing the system outward. Rock chips in 2024 ran to 3.22 % TREO and 0.75 % Nb₂O₅, and a December 2025 program 3 km south-east of the drilling returned niobium to 6,649 ppm Nb₂O₅. Dysprosium oxide has been reported to 740 ppm inside high-grade intervals.
Very little of it has been drilled. Soil geochemistry defines multiple parallel zones over 2.7 km, nothing has been drilled west of the main road, and the Machinga South and Lingoni radiometric anomalies are effectively untouched.
Terms
- On completion, A$750,000 cash plus A$750,000 in shares, being 30 million at A$0.025 with 12 months of voluntary escrow.
- A further A$1.25 m cash within 12 months of completion.
- A$1.25 m in performance shares converting only on a JORC-compliant resource of at least 10 Mt at 0.65 % TREO within three years. The resource target is written into the deal, which is a useful read on what vendor and buyer both think is achievable.
- Completion needs MMRA approval of the licence transfers under Malawi's Mines and Minerals Act 2023.
On the Bokan benchmark
Material circulating with the acquisition compares Machinga to Bokan-Dotson Ridge in Alaska, owned by Ucore Rare Metals (TSXV: UCU), on shared peralkaline geology. The geological comparison is warranted.
Machinga's drilled grades of 0.6 to 1.4 % TREO sit above Bokan's resource grade, its mineralisation starts at surface where Bokan is contemplated underground, and Bokan has a defined resource where Machinga has none at all. Reading a peer's market capitalisation across to a pre-resource exploration licence is a rhetorical device rather than an analysis.
Technical sign-off. Exploration results from the 2026 Tundulu drilling are reviewed by Mark Mitchell, a member of the Australian Institute of Geoscientists and an independent consultant to AuKing, as Competent Person. The historical results for Salambidwe, Ngala Hill and Karonga were reviewed by Ian Hodkinson, also AIG.
Catalysts
What could move next
Board approved, not yet drilled
1,000 m
On 15 September 2026 the AuKing board approved planning for a single diamond hole to roughly 1,000 m, to test the system at significantly greater depth. It sits inside the current drilling budget rather than requiring new funding.
For scale: that is nearly double 26NH032, which stopped at 510.62 m with carbonatite still in the core, and it would be the deepest hole ever drilled at Tundulu by a factor of about seven against the 1988 JICA average of 50 m. No collar, no timing and no rig allocation have been published.
Approximate and subject to change. Nothing here is a commitment by the company.
14 Sep 2026First assays reported, from RC holes 26NH005, 26NH029, 26NH004 and 26NH014. Wide zones of high-grade mineralisation validating and in places exceeding the historical record, with the full per-metre dataset published.
15 Sep 2026A 1,000 m diamond hole approved. The board signed off planning for a hole to roughly 1,000 m after the initial assays and the carbonatite-to-end-of-hole results in both diamond holes strengthened the interpretation of a substantial system. Within the existing budget. Planning stage: nothing drilled yet.
Coming weeksThe rest of the RC program. 4,500 samples were taken in total, export permits for all of them are in hand, and the remaining batches are at Intertek Perth, being assessed, or in preparation. AuKing expects a steady flow of results.
Q4 2026Assays from the diamond holes. 1,160.6 m has been cored across four holes, led by 26NH032 at 510.62 m and 26NH023 at 400.42 m. These will be the first grades from below the historical drilling floor, and AuKing has prioritised them. Given the RC results, finding significant mineralisation at 400 to 500 m would change the shape of the project.
Q4 2026Two deep diamond holes planned to roughly 500 m to test depth continuity beneath Nathace Hill, Tundulu East and Kamilala Hill, alongside shallower surface holes and tails extending selected RC holes to about 150 m.
19 Oct 2026EGM in Brisbane: ratification of the July placement, service-contract shares and broker options.
Q4 2026Completion of the Green Exploration acquisition. The binding condition is ASX confirming to both AuKing and Tusker that full quotation re-compliance under Chapter 11 is not required, plus MMRA approval of the licence transfers. This settles title to Tundulu as well as bringing in the other three licences.
2027First drilling at Salambidwe, which has never been drilled. AuKing plans to compile and validate the Globe and DY6 datasets, reprocess and invert the 2024 airborne survey, run a gap analysis, then map and sample ahead of maiden drill targets.
2027EM surveying at Ngala Hill, which has never had one, followed by the drilling that decides whether the A$500,000 in performance shares converts.
Late 2026Metallurgical and mineralogical testwork on diamond core composites, the work that turns a grade into a potential product and a required input to the resource estimate.
Dec 2026 to Feb 2027AuKing aims to finish the first 15,000 m of combined RC and diamond drilling by year end, then decides whether to extend or break for the southern Malawi wet season.
Late 2026Machinga work program, funded from existing cash: integrate the historical drilling, soil and radiometric datasets with new drone magnetics and LiDAR to refine targets, then RC and diamond drilling on strike and depth extensions, the untested ground west and south of the drilled area, and the Machinga South and Lingoni anomalies. Subject to approvals, rig availability and the wet season.
Before end 2026Maiden JORC mineral resource estimate. The board has formally prioritised the work off the back of these assays, with metallurgical and mineralogical testwork on diamond core composites as a key input. Subject to sufficient drilling and assay data. This is the step that converts sixty years of historical data into something a valuation can stand on.
OngoingTransfer of EL 0731/24 to Tundulu Rare Earths Ltd at the MMRA; remaining sample export permits.
Nov 2026External, not company-specific: China's scheduled review of its rare earth export licensing regime. The main swing factor for Dy, Tb and Ga pricing.
How it got here
1962M.S. Garson maps the three nested igneous centres for the Geological Survey of Nyasaland. Still the standard reference.
1970sGeological Survey of Malawi drills Nathace Hill for phosphate, outlining a non-JORC ~900 kt @ 22 % P₂O₅ plus ~1 Mt of apatite sövite above 10 % P₂O₅.
1986–87JICA and the Metal Mining Agency of Japan screen 30,000 km² and 25 sectors. Tundulu is placed in the top tier of four, listed first, and is one of only three sectors anomalous in all fifteen carbonatite pathfinder elements. Phase 1 recommends drilling it.
1987–88JICA drills: 24 diamond holes for 1,204.8 m against a 50 m rig limit, 243 ore samples and 85 rock chips, 25 of them above 1 % TREO and peaking at 6.41 %. Tundulu gets the largest survey area of the three Chilwa sectors. Kangankunde is never drilled.
1989Consolidated report publishes a preliminary 0.6 Mt at 2.09 % REO and 0.5 Mt at 17.0 % P₂O₅ for Tundulu, comparing the grades with Bayan Obo and Araxá, and recommends further detailed drilling to grow the reserve.
2014–15Optichem / Mota-Engil JV drills 55 holes for 7,002 m and 10 trenches totalling 600 m, chasing phosphate. This is still the bulk of the modern dataset.
2023–24DY6 Metals compiles the historical database and runs reconnaissance sampling; SEM and XRD confirm synchysite and fluorapatite.
Oct 2024Trench TUTR10: 63 samples over 83 m to 3.35 % TREO and 27.5 % P₂O₅; a 120 kg composite at 1.88 % TREO and 9.07 % P₂O₅, with mercury, lead and cadmium below detection.
2025Auralia Metallurgy confirms a dual REE and phosphate flowsheet, recovering over 85 % of TREO and over 90 % of P₂O₅.
Apr 2026AuKing agrees to acquire 100 % of Tundulu.
May–Jun 2026Thompson Resources contracted. Drone magnetics and LiDAR redraw the system as much larger than mapped. Maiden drilling starts, expanded from 10,000 m towards ~15,000 m across ~50 targets.
Jul 2026Carbonatite intersected across three of six interpreted complexes; A$5 m placement completed, oversubscribed; RC phase finishes at 4,300 m in 31 holes on 31 July.
Aug 2026First diamond hole to 510.6 m and second to 400.4 m, both extended past plan, both ending in carbonatite. Green Exploration acquisition agreed with Tusker Minerals.
Sep 2026Malawi export approval for drill samples; licence transfer to TREL progressing at the MMRA.