Hot on the heels of a $7.6 million fundraising mission that lured in Hancock Prospecting, Future Battery Minerals has rolled up its sleeves and got straight to work at its two promising lithium projects in WA and Nevada.
The work includes chasing up a discovery of spodumene-bearing lithium pegmatites at the company’s Rocky prospect within its Kangaroo Hills project in WA’s Goldfields region. Management believes it could lead to a bigger stacked pegmatite swarm after interpreting it to have a collective strike and dip similar to those at its Big Red prospect.
Future Battery says its current drilling is targeting interpreted strike extensions to the pegmatite swarm at Rocky and Big Red, which extends through an area measuring about 1.2km-by-1.5km and remains open in all directions. It is awaiting assays from 57 completed reverse-circulation (RC) drill holes and for six diamond-core holes, while more diamond drilling is being planned to check out the depth extensions of mineralised pegmatites.
The company says that once analytical information is in hand from its current and previous drilling campaigns, which will assist its understanding of the mineralising events and structures in the greater area, it will begin further testing of the Wallaroo, Pademelon and Eastern Grey regional targets.
Following the completion last week of the over-subscribed $7.6 million Placement from institutional and sophisticated investors, including Hancock Prospecting Pty Ltd, the Company has wasted no time in advancing exploration activities at its two lithium projects at the KHLP and the NLP. These activities signal a big momentum shift for the Company as we are now fully funded with an aggressive, expanded exploration strategy underway aiming to deliver two maiden lithium resources in the new year. This is an exciting new chapter for FBM.
Meanwhile, the company is continuing with its target-generative geophysics, with a resistivity survey now about 50 per cent complete and it expects the data will assist with identifying any potentially mineralised subsurface pegmatites in the project area.
It has also embarked on its first metallurgical evaluation of the amenability of its spodumene-bearing pegmatites to common physical mineral separation processing methods such as heavy media separation (HMS) and froth flotation. The work is expected to be completed late next month and the findings will complement future metallurgical studies as the project advances.
While all of the activities are advancing, the company is also undertaking baseline flora and fauna surveys in the area of the Kangaroo Hills timber reserve. The surveys are prerequisites to future permitting and project advancement, particularly to the north/north-west of the pegmatite swarm, and are expected to be completed in early November.
At Future Battery’s United States-based Nevada project, it expects to start a planned diamond drilling campaign in about a week. The four-hole program forms part of a bigger campaign comprised of open-spaced RC and targeted diamond drilling designed to test the Lone Mountain lithium-bearing clay-stones in the project.
The thick, shallow clay-stones have been mapped in an area of about 3km-by-1.3km and appear to remain open for an additional 2km to the south, implying a potentially vast scale to the lithium mineralisation. The company says it is pressing ahead with its exploration with the objective of delivering a maiden mineral resource estimate early next year.
Nevada comprises five key prospects – Traction, San Antone, Heller, Lone Mountain and Western Flats – that embrace more than 90sq km of ground considered highly prospective for larger sedimentary-hosted lithium deposits.
The region is home to several large sedimentary-hosted lithium deposits including Ioneer Resources’ Rhyolite Ridge and American Lithium Corporation’s TLC project, while Albemarle Corporation’s Silver Peak lithium mine, currently the only producing lithium mine in North America, lies approximately 45km to the west of Nevada.
Future Battery completed its phase-one maiden 2900m RC drilling program in March, discovering lithium-bearing clay-stones in the Siebert Formation, exemplified by one hole which intercepted 109.7m carrying 766 parts per million lithium from 135.6m. Thick high-grade lithium-clay-stones were also intersected in three other drillholes at Western Flats.
On the corporate front, the company’s newly-appointed managing director Nick Rathjen is set to take up his post earlier than expected mid-next month.
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