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Avalon Advanced Materials Inc
Symbol AVL
Shares Issued 237,018,428
Close 2018-10-10 C$ 0.075
Market Cap C$ 17,776,382
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Avalon Advanced talks Nechalacho project

2018-10-10 16:32 ET - News Release

Mr. Don Bubar reports

AVALON PROVIDES PROGRESS REPORT ON NECHALACHO RARE EARTHS PROJECT, YELLOWKNIFE, NWT

Avalon Advanced Materials Inc. has provided a progress report on its 100-per-cent-owned Nechalacho rare earths project near Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories since announcing the reactivation of the project on May 15, 2018. Concerns about security of supply of these critical elements are growing, as the trade dispute between China and the United States escalates. China still controls over 90 per cent of global primary rare earth supply and investors well remember when China restricted rare earths exports in 2010 over a territorial dispute in the South China Sea.

Over the past four months, Avalon Advanced Materials has successfully renewed its land use permit and completed the perimeter survey of several contiguous mineral claims in order to bring them to lease. The lease application has been submitted and approval is expected by late October, 2018. Avalon Advanced Materials completed a field program in September, 2018, to conduct additional sampling in the area of the T zone and Tardiff Lakes zone to begin assessing their potential as sources of neodymium-rich and praseodymium-rich concentrates currently in high demand for magnet applications. Sampling was also done in the T zone to begin assessing the resource potential of widespread lithium mineralization occurring as the lithium mica polylithionite. Lastly, work continued on the independent scoping study on the East Arm-Yellowknife road and hydro power infrastructure corridor.

The recent field program resulted in 41 drill core and rock samples, and 80 biogeochemistry samples being shipped for analysis for rare earths and lithium. Analytical results are expected in early November, 2018. The rare earths in the high-grade sections of the North T zone are contained largely in the ore mineral bastnaesite, which has a relatively high rare earth content of around 24 per cent, and may be easily concentrated by ore sorting methods. Additional samples of the bastnaesite mineralization were collected for initial ore sorting process testwork contemplated for this fall. Avalon Advanced Materials plans to investigate the possibility of developing Nechalacho as a near-term, small-scale producer of concentrates rich in neodymium and praseodymium for export, potentially involving a low-cost mining, crushing and ore sorting operation.

The South T zone is also known to contain lithium and rare earth mineralization, although the original exploration drilling in the 1980s was focused on beryllium and no formal resource estimate was established for rare earths or lithium. Once the assays are received for the core samples from the North T zone and South T zone, Avalon Advanced Materials intends to update the resource estimate for rare earths and develop a new resource model for lithium in these two deposits.

Previous work by Avalon Advanced Materials at Nechalacho focused on the heavy rare-earth-rich Basal zone deposit, which was the subject of the company's 2013 feasibility study. In the course of drilling the Basal zone, very high-grade Nd-Pr mineralization in bastnaesite was intersected near surface in the Tardiff Lakes area, with grades of up to 10.78 per cent total rare earth oxides over 11 metres being intersected. To better map the extent of the near-surface Tardiff Lakes mineralization, which is largely overburden covered, the field crew collected 80 biogeochemistry samples to test this method for outlining near-surface rare earth mineralization -- a method which has proven to be very effective in recent exploration for lithium on the company's Separation Rapids property in Northwestern Ontario.

The Nechalacho project is located in the traditional territory of the Akaitcho First Nations. Avalon Advanced Materials would like to acknowledge the financial support of the government of the Northwest Territories toward the infrastructure scoping study and the recent field program through a mineral incentive grant.

Separation Rapids lithium project preliminary economic assessment

Further to the company's news release of Aug. 21, 2018, in which the results of its preliminary economic assessment were disclosed, the report entitled, "Preliminary Economic Assessment for the Production of Petalite Concentrate from the Separation Rapids Lithium Deposit, Kenora, Ontario," was filed on SEDAR on Sept. 28, 2018, and is available on Avalon Advanced Materials' website. In accordance with the regulations under National Instrument 43-101, it is noted that the preliminary economic assessment must be considered preliminary in nature, as it includes inferred mineral resources that are considered too speculative geologically to have the economic considerations applied to them that would enable them to be categorized as mineral reserves. There is no certainty that the preliminary economic assessment will be realized.

The technical information included in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Dr. William Mercer, PGeo (Ontario), the company's vice-president of exploration, who is a qualified person under NI 43-101.

About Avalon Advanced Materials Inc.

Avalon Advanced Materials is a Canadian mineral development company specializing in niche market metals and minerals with growing demand in new technology. The company has three advanced-stage projects, all 100 per cent owned, providing investors with exposure to lithium, tin and indium, as well as rare earth elements, tantalum, niobium and zirconium. Avalon Advanced Materials is currently focusing on its Separation Rapids lithium project, Kenora, Ont., and its East Kemptville tin-indium project, Yarmouth, N.S., to production, while continuing to advance its Nechalacho rare earths asset.

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