The somewhat anomalous rock chips were all muscovite with only...

The somewhat anomalous rock chips were all muscovite with only two being lepidolite float, that were right next to each other. All the other rock chips contained completely insignificant Li levels. These pegmatites are clearly not fractionated enough, and they’ve put holes in their best targets.

It doesn’t matter if the pegs/granites are technically fertile with Li, if the P/T and volatile/flux environment is not right for the Li content to concentrate and crystallise into spod from the melt, you just end up with barren pegmatite or some raised Li content in other pegmatitic minerals. Often micas, like muscovite and minor lepidolite in this case.


Look at those yellow chip trays. The geo at the rig clearly hasn’t seen any spod, management have not once mentioned the word spodumene in any announcement to date. Just lepidolite in the footnotes.