ASX-listed critical minerals explorer Lodestar Minerals has received firm commitments to raise $4.4-million through a placement of 291-million shares at a price of $0.0151 apiece, which will drive the company's exploration efforts across the Three Saints and Los Loros copper projects in Chile, the Virgin Mountain heavy rare earths project in the US and the Ned's Creek gold project in Western Australia.

The company's directors are supporting the capital raising through a commitment of $305 700 in addition to the placement but on the same terms as the placement.

The placement, should shareholders approve it, will be led by Oakley Capital Partners, which upsized the initial placement following considerable demand from a range of existing Lodestar shareholders and other professional and sophisticated investors.

In Chile, Lodestar awaits assay results from a diamond drilling programme on the Three Saints project in the coming weeks, where extensive visible chalcopyrite (copper sulphide) was observed across multiple intervals from depths between 190 m and 600 m in the project's maiden drill hole. A second diamond drill hole was also completed to a depth of 611 m, which displayed encouraging signatures of potential increasing copper mineralisations at depth.

At Los Loros, Lodestar will soon start its first drill campaign targeting copper/molybdenum porphyry and high-grade epithermal gold.

At Virgin Mountain, Lodestar will be progressing a high-resolution airborne radiometric and magnetic survey over the project area to follow up on recent identification of surface expressions of xenotime-bearing rare earth element mineralisation - which is a lead indicator that a prospect is heavy rare earth-enriched.

Finally, Lodestar is working to deliver a maiden mineral resource estimate on Ned's Creek to enable future development options to be considered. The company is progressing a 10 000 m drill programme on site, with the resource estimate on track to be published later in the year.