Dysprosium in North America: Volta and Saga Could Have Two Most Important Projects
Dysprosium (Dy) could become one of the most important and valuable Rare Earth Elements of the coming decade. It is a key ingredient in high-performance neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) permanent magnets, helping them maintain performance at high temperatures. These magnets are critical to electric vehicle motors, wind turbines, advanced electronics, industrial equipment, and defense technologies.
The challenge is that dysprosium is one of the more difficult critical minerals for North America to source domestically. That makes the discovery and development of large-scale North American REE projects containing meaningful dysprosium increasingly important.
NIA believes investors looking for exposure to dysprosium in North America should be paying extremely close attention to both Volta Metals (CSE: VLTA) and Saga Metals (TSXV: SAGA). The two companies are at different stages of exploration and resource definition, but could potentially be advancing North America’s most important dysprosium-bearing REE projects.
Volta Metals (CSE: VLTA) shows how quickly successful drilling can transform the scale of an REE project. VLTA began its inaugural drilling program at its Springer REE Project in September 2025 and today has a current NI 43-101 Mineral Resource Estimate containing 56.6 million tonnes Indicated at 0.70% TREO plus 119.5 million tonnes Inferred at 0.58% TREO… a combined 176.1 million tonnes of REE mineralization.
Importantly, Springer contains dysprosium. The resource averages 38 ppm Dy₂O₃ in the Indicated category and 31 ppm Dy₂O₃ in the Inferred category, equivalent to approximately 33.1 ppm and 27.0 ppm elemental dysprosium, respectively.
Some of VLTA’s individual drill intercepts have contained much higher dysprosium grades. Drill hole SL25-24 returned 27.1 metres averaging 157.8 ppm Dy₂O₃… approximately 137.5 ppm elemental Dy. That gives investors a useful real-world benchmark for what 100+ ppm elemental dysprosium can look like over a meaningful drill width within a large REE system.
VLTA’s success is particularly relevant when evaluating Saga Metals (TSXV: SAGA), because SAGA is approximately one major drilling cycle behind VLTA at its Wolverine Heavy Rare Earth Project in Labrador.
Prior to SAGA acquiring Wolverine, only 817.4 metres of shallow RC drilling across 25 holes had been completed in 2025. Despite that extremely limited drilling, 19 of the 25 RC holes returned mineralized intercepts exceeding 0.2% TREO, confirming broad, near-surface mineralization across an approximately 1.7 km by 1.2 km area.
Some of the most important 2025 RC results included:
- WOLRC25-003: 48.8 m @ 0.77% TREO from 1.5 m, including 18.3 m @ 1.06% TREO
- WOLRC25-006: 38.1 m @ 0.71% TREO from surface, including 4.6 m @ 1.53% TREO
- WOLRC25-002: 51.8 m @ 0.52% TREO from surface, including 33.5 m @ 0.67% TREO
Peak RC sample grades reached 2.03% TREO, with an average Heavy Rare Earth Oxide (HREO) contribution of approximately 24-28%. SAGA has said these results demonstrated sufficient scale and continuity to justify advancing Wolverine toward NI 43-101 resource definition.
That is exactly what SAGA is now attempting. The company has begun an initial 4,000-5,000 metre diamond drilling program designed to confirm vertical grade continuity, test the thickness of the mineralized horizon, collect metallurgical material, and advance Wolverine toward a maiden NI 43-101 Mineral Resource Estimate.
In other words, investors shouldn’t compare VLTA’s current 176.1-million-tonne resource against SAGA’s current absence of a resource. VLTA has already gone through the drilling and resource-definition process that SAGA is only now beginning… and it did so in roughly a year.
SAGA’s very first 2026 diamond hole, W26-001, intersected 169 metres of prospective REE-bearing volcanic ash tuff. SAGA described the location as the cool, upper end of the feeder, raising the possibility that different or potentially higher-grade REE mineralization could occur deeper within the system.
Scientists reported as far back as 1993 that the Wolverine Heavy Rare Earth Project, then known as Nuiklavik, contained rare-metal mineralization 32 metres thick in one occurrence and at least 4 metres thick over an area of 14 square kilometres:
Today, the broader prospective REE-bearing ash-flow footprint at Wolverine covers approximately 26 sq km, and only a small portion has been drill tested.
This is the key distinction when comparing SAGA and VLTA. VLTA’s Springer resource is already very large at 176.1 million tonnes and remains open for expansion… NIA is not suggesting Springer has reached its ultimate size. However, SAGA’s exploration upside could ultimately be even larger, because Wolverine’s prospective system covers roughly 26 square kilometres while drilling has tested only a small portion. If ongoing and future diamond drilling confirms that the thickness, grade, and continuity seen in the early holes extend across substantial portions of that footprint, Wolverine could ultimately support a resource materially larger than what is currently defined at Springer.
This is an NIA exploration thesis, not a current mineral resource estimate. SAGA must complete substantially more drilling, receive assays, conduct the necessary geological modelling, and satisfy NI 43-101 requirements before the size of a Wolverine resource can be established. In the nearer term, it is reasonable to consider whether the 4,000-5,000 metre diamond program, combined with the previous 817.4 metres of RC drilling, could establish a maiden resource that begins to approach other major North American REE projects such as Springer. Whether Wolverine ultimately matches or exceeds Springer’s current 176.1 million tonnes will be determined by drilling and cannot yet be known.
Dysprosium makes this potential scale particularly interesting.
NIA has the full database of historical samples taken from the Wolverine Heavy Rare Earth Project. From what we see, all 249 historical samples in the database… taken across SAGA’s 26 sq km REE ash-flow footprint… contain dysprosium.
Most interestingly, SAGA’s first two 2026 diamond drill holes were completed in close proximity to historical samples containing some of the project’s highest dysprosium grades:
- Historical sample 114: 168.6 ppm Dy
- Historical sample 141: 334.2 ppm Dy
- Historical sample 134: 192.8 ppm Dy
These are elemental Dy grades. For perspective, VLTA’s exceptional 27.1-metre interval averaging 157.8 ppm Dy₂O₃ is equivalent to approximately 137.5 ppm elemental Dy. It is important to emphasize that SAGA’s historical values are surface samples whereas VLTA’s result is a drill intercept average, so they cannot be treated as directly equivalent evidence. The significance of the historical Wolverine samples is that they demonstrate very high dysprosium concentrations within the geological system; SAGA’s ongoing assays will determine whether elevated Dy grades continue across meaningful widths at depth.
The following photo isn’t even part of SAGA’s main 26 sq km REE ash-flow footprint. It shows a separate area of the broader Wolverine Project where surface samples returned grades as high as 21.6% TREO, including one sample with an extraordinary 2,980 ppm dysprosium and others with 2,570 ppm Dy and 3,550 ppm Dy. These are surface grab samples and aren’t representative of average grades across Wolverine, but they provide additional evidence of the extraordinary degree to which dysprosium can become enriched within the broader geological system.
SAGA’s rocks at Wolverine are among the oldest in the world. They were once geographically connected with Greenland, which hosts some of the world’s largest known REE deposits.
Another excellent example of why investors should pay close attention to dysprosium grades is USA Rare Earth (USAR)’s Round Top Project. Round Top’s historical REE resource contains approximately 31.7 ppm dysprosium in its Measured & Indicated resource. A USA Rare Earth management presentation described Round Top as “uniquely rich in dysprosium” and stated that dysprosium represented approximately 46% of the project’s rare earth value. That illustrates why total TREO grade alone doesn’t tell the full story: a relatively small percentage of a deposit by weight can account for a disproportionately large share of its economic value when it consists of high-value magnet rare earths such as dysprosium.
This is what makes both VLTA’s Springer and SAGA’s Wolverine so interesting. VLTA has already demonstrated what successful drilling can accomplish, emerging with a 176.1-million-tonne NI 43-101 resource containing meaningful dysprosium in roughly a year, while additional drilling indicates the system remains open for expansion. SAGA is earlier in the same process: Wolverine has no mineral resource estimate, but limited RC drilling already established broad REE mineralization, significant Heavy Rare Earth enrichment, and continuity across a substantial area… and SAGA is now adding 4,000-5,000 metres of diamond drilling across a system whose overall prospective footprint is far larger than the portion drilled to date. While VLTA currently has the advantage of a defined resource, NIA believes SAGA could potentially have the greater exploration upside. The question isn’t whether Wolverine already has a resource comparable to Springer… it clearly does not, because the necessary drilling and resource estimation haven’t yet been completed. The question is what Wolverine could look like after SAGA completes the type of drilling that allowed Springer to establish and rapidly expand its own resource.
If SAGA’s ongoing drilling successfully demonstrates continuity across Wolverine’s prospective REE-bearing system, NIA believes the project has the geological scale to potentially become substantially larger over the long term than its initial maiden resource ultimately defines.
Past performance is not an indicator of future returns. NIA is not an investment advisor and does not provide investment advice. Always do your own research and make your own investment decisions. NIA has received compensation from SAGA of US$100,000 cash for a twelve-month marketing contract. This message is meant for informational and educational purposes only and does not provide investment advice.