Ann: High Grade Li2O Samples Confirms Extensive Drill Target, page-6

How to read hard rock lithium exploration results

So just what makes for good hard rock lithium exploration results?

At the very early stages, most explorers use radiometric anomalies in addition to outcrops, as some of the minerals that occur in pegmatites give off a notable signature.

“If there are associated minerals such as tin and tantalum, which are heavy minerals that often stay in the soil proximal to the mineralisation, you may do soil sampling for lithium, but most just very quickly go to drilling,” Cowen said.

As for drilling Cowden noted that grades of about 1.6% lithium oxide, which are seen at Firefinch’s world-class Goulamina project in Mali, are pretty much the “gold standard”.

“It’s really hard to see grades much higher, you do get grades up in the twos and so forth, but the average grade, if it’s less than 1%, it’s going to struggle,” he explained.

“If it’s getting closer to 1.5% then it’s pretty interesting.

“You can get grades higher than that but the issue with spodumene is that it only contains ~6% lithium oxide, so there’s not a lot of lithium in these things. Fortunately, lithium is worth a lot of money at the moment.”

Cowden added that metallurgy is very important. The cleaner the concentrate, the better the price that a spodumene producer will get from the downstream processor.

“But what’s moving very quickly is the understanding of how you float and separate the spodumene from the other minerals, and they’re continually inventing new reagents to use to optimise that process,” he noted.

“So that may become less and less of an issue as we get more and more sophisticated.”