Extensional drilling by Latin Resources has unveiled a significant lithium swarm, extending the footprint of its Colina deposit in Brazil to more than 2km long and 1km wide.
Management says assay highlights from its latest round of drilling include 19.6m at 1.42 per cent lithium from 114.3m, 13.79m grading 1.52 per cent from 293.28m and 24.74m going 1.23 per cent lithium from 50.16m. Having knocked over a fully-funded resource definition diamond drilling campaign of 133 holes for 38,300m, the company expects to reveal a resource update next month.
The continued expansion of this lithium pegmatite deposit is phenomenal and has the whole team very excited to potentially see this develop into a tier one lithium deposit in the Minas Gerais Lithium Valley. We will now move some rigs to start testing to expand the deposit through systematic step-out to the southwest from the known Colina mineralisation or what our team call the Colina Corridor, where our deposit remains open. Latin Resources vice-president of operations – Americas Tony Greenaway
The company’s fleet of eight diamond drill rigs will continue foot-to-the-floor drilling at Colina until the Christmas break. The work is aimed at three goals – systematic step-out drilling to the south-west of Colina where the high-grade mineralisation remains open, targeted large-diameter “PQ” drilling for use in metallurgical testwork and probing new regional targets.
The Colina deposit already has a resource of 13.3 million tonnes at 1.2 per cent lithium oxide. Now, drilling at the south-west extension of the project is showing that the lithium-bearing pegmatites persist and cover an area at least as big as the company’s resource footprint, with mineralisation open in all directions.
Latin is now understandably fast-tracking its resource drilling and project development at Colina. In March, it signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with Invest Minas to help accelerate the approvals process for its Salinas hard-rock spodumene lithium project, which includes Colina.
Brazil’s reputation is growing in the lithium space. The Advanced Metallurgical Group-owned Mibra mine is producing 90,000 tonnes of spodumene annually and has plans to expand that to 130,000 tonnes by the middle of the year.
Meanwhile, optimism is again growing across the sector after it watched the price of lithium spiral downwards between November last year and May this year. Mineral Resources boss Chris Ellison is the latest identity to call the bottom of the lithium price slump, telling the Bank of America Global Metals Mining and Steel conference in Barcelona that he expects increased demand for the battery metal to push prices higher over the next few months.
The billionaire declared bullishly that there was “no question that prices have bottomed out”.
That message would have been heard loud and clear over the deafening roar of the drill rigs at the Colina deposit as Latin looks to build on its already big numbers while it pushes toward a mineral resource update that many will have an eye on.
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