Sonia Madigan:
I’m here at Kalgoorlie Diggers & Dealers with Global Lithium Resources’ (GL1) MD Ron Mitchell.
Now they’re about to start a phase two drilling program, just an hour’s drive from here. Can you tell us about that, Ron?
Ron Mitchell:
Yeah, really exciting.
We Just finished our heritage surveys across the existing mining lease area at Manna.
It’s about 100 kilometres and we’ve got a 50,000-metre exploration campaign soon to kick off, so we’re expecting our resource to continue to scale.
[It’s] already a world-class resource, 36 million tonnes at 1.13 per cent, and we think we’re gonna’ add some serious additional tonnes to that asset, so a really exciting time.Sonia Madigan:
So you’re here at Diggers & Dealers, what do you hope to achieve when you attend an event like this?
Ron Mitchell:
Yeah, look, there’s a lot. Obviously, a lot of service, local companies here that are gonna’ look to service our mine going forwards, help us with the DFS going forward.
Obviously, our traditional owners are based out here, so had the pleasure to take some of our board out onto Gadjidgar country yesterday.
Me with the traditional owners, so that’s a really important relationship that we’re putting a lot of effort into. Great people to be working with. And obviously just networking more broadly.
There’s a number of investors here from Perth and obviously offshore and the East Coast and we had a site visit as well.
So took a few internationals out to site on Sunday, pre-diggers, so it’s been a busy time.
Sonia Madigan:
And certainly, battery metals have been a focus here this year’s Diggers & Dealers. In fact, there were more presentations for battery metals than for gold for the first time ever.
What sort of feeling is there in the space amongst investors, brokers, and companies?
Ron Mitchell:
Look, it’s bullish and energy, we’re part of the energy transition future and it’s not easy. It doesn’t happen overnight, it’s going to take decades to play out.
But importantly, we’ve got the assets here in Western Australia. We’re supplying more than 50 per cent of the world’s lithium already.
And my expectation going forward, things like our hard rock story is going to be a massive part of the future, so investors are loving it.
Obviously, the off-take partners that were in discussions are very interested in Western Australia. It’s a safe place to do business and that’s really important as well.
Sonia Madigan:
Well when you’re talking off-take, you must be quite confident that you can move this project along quite quickly.
Ron Mitchell:
Yeah, it’s just phenomenal interest. We’re a company that’s young, we’ve only been listed a couple of years, but we’ve two projects we own outright and we’ve got one that’s moving forward through development.
So we’re looking to have a final investment decision next year and the closer we get to the FID, the more interest is coming.
We’ve got interest from Japan, Korea, of course, China, Europe, North America, even India and Indonesia. So yeah, we’re really spoiled for choice.
Sonia Madigan:
And that’s even before production begins?
Ron Mitchell:
A long way. Yeah, we’re expecting, you know, if we proceed with DSO, we could be in production as early as next year, the back end of next year.
The full beneficiation, the spodumene concentrate plant’s a 2026 production story but we’re not far from ’26 as you know.