"Neighbours, everybody needs good neighboursWith a little...

"Neighbours, everybody needs good neighbours
With a little understanding, you can find the perfect blend
Neighbours, should be there for one another
That's when good neighbours become good friends"

I never watched the show but I heard it was a Barry Crocker...

Here is a mudmap which Loyal Lithium (ASX:LLI) used in a recent presentation, with Adina in black, Galinee in red and Trieste in blue.



While Winsome with Adina and Loyal with Trieste might consider themselves good neighbours they are not next door neighbours; they are effectively separated by the Galinee property. Galinee is currently 100% owned by Midland Exploration, a TSX listed company with a market cap of about C$42m. I think peculiar to Canada Midland is one of a number of companies that effectively act as mineral talent scouts whereby they take up multiple land holdings which are prospective or at least are near to properties that are prospective which they then pimp out to actual mining companies. Midland has one portfolio of properties close to Adina, Corvette, Allkem's James Bay, Whabouchi and Moblan among others which in June they optioned out to a unit of Rio Tinto. The arrangement looks a standard deal in that if Rio spends a certain amount in a certain time frame then they get to own 50% of that property portfolio and if they spend some more they get to own 70%. Midland has similar option deals with BHP and Barrick so it seems they are very effective talent scouts.

Now, as I said Rio and Midland signed up the option deal in June. In August Midland and the Rio unit began kicking rocks on some of the properties, including at the Galinee property which has a boundary only 4 km due east of Adina. The thing is the Rio unit is the project operator so it is Rio geos doing the kicking. On 19 September Midland reported that they had found spodumene bearing pegmatite dykes which are 8 km east of Adina along the same highly favourable contact zone where Adina's hits have been found. That structure runs for about 7 km through the Galinee property (which is about 28 sqkm in area). In the news release Midland say that the intention is to start a drilling campaign there "later in 2023".

As for that Loyal friend of Winsome's, they are not mucking around either. Just in August they announced they had found a number of spodumene bearing pegmatite dykes on their Trieste property. Although Trieste covers about 251 sqkm the dykes they found were bunched into a 6 sq km patch. This area is 14 km east of Adina, so maybe 6 km east of the swarm on the Galinee property. On 28 September Loyal reported they had decided to damn the torpedoes and had kicked off drilling, presumably using a helicopter to mobilise the rig they had managed to line up. I am not entirely sure but my guess is that Loyal also is focusing on the same highly favourable contact zone that Winsome and Midland/Rio have identified.

So possibly by the end of this calendar year, before Winsome puts out its maiden MRE, both Midland/Rio and Loyal would have started reporting assay results. If the results are good I guess that should be good news for Winsome, sort of like warm-up acts for Winsome's grand MRE announcement next January/February.

Two other points of note: I'm guessing that not only Loyal but Midland/Rio will want to use Winsome's snow road up to the Trans Taiga Highway over winter and that not only best buds Winsome and Loyal but also Midland/Rio will be lobbying hard for Route 167 to be extended north to link up with the TTH. As I noted in a previous post Rio is already a gorilla in Quebec with a number of mines and smelters and an aluminium refinery so it is likely they already have the ear of government there. My final point is that Rio as project operator for the Galinee project, which is as good as next door to and on the same trend as Adina, will have a bunch of techs that are forming an in-depth understanding of the Adina ore body. If Rio does decide to get into lithium their size means they will not muck around and will want to go large right off the bat.

I don't hold Loyal, Rio or Midland.