@SugeKnightI understand your thinking and I agree on the that part, and this excludes Andrada - there is no big-time precedent for Askari to follow in the footsteps of like there is in Australia, Canada, Brazil, etc. You can't say "we will be the next best thing in Namibia"... because there is no one to beat right now, as you mentioned. No nearology or any well-known producers or developers, not even a glimmer of a scalable battery/chemical grade resource anywhere else out there. This is probably the reason most are discounting Askari. You could say Askari's goals of a spodumene-dominated maiden resource are... unprecendented
Like you've posted here with those (irrelevant?) Omaruru results, 'every Lithium project in Namibia to date is the dusty type'... Well it's no coincidence that every Lithium project in Namibia to date has been dust.. that's because they are all lepidolite, petalite, or a combination of the both. This means that because of the inherent properties of these lithium ores, the grades of those deposits
will be
significantly lower than a spodumene deposit, as seen with Andrada. So, the Uis swarm obviously has the tonnage (pegmatite volume and abundance) with Andrada's 200mt target. All that's left is my favourite, much higher grade lithium ore to compliment that. I did mention all of this in my initial reply but not really sure if it got through, but that's okay.
And what a surprise, as soon as Andrada start drilling some pegmatites closer to us... Scratch that - in the meat of the Askari tenement sandwich.. they find some big white spodumene crystals, in pegmatite intercepts up to 30m.
Interesting to note that the widest zone of their B1/C1 pegmatites at surface are 30m too. One can't help but wonder if this is indicative of the intercepts we might see on the multiple "large scale", 50m+ wide pegmatite bodies at EPL 8535..? And that's just considering the pegmatites from the initial mapping by the company. My cool pictures from space tell me there may be some a bit wider... more on that later
So I agree, there is naturally a higher risk that comes with exploring a new country, or district. Especially when so far, in the little amount of exploration done in Namibia, there is only dust. But my philosophy is.. in any new region, the biggest deposits get found first. They're the hardest to miss... all imo
Good luck in AZS, don't think you can go wrong there. Some thick initial intercepts.
Cheers
