Hey all, been watching AS2 since around June last year and it's starting to look quite promising in Uis.
While the nearology of the AS2 tenements to Afritin can increase one's confidence, they aren't a fantastic gauge of the spodumene content of Askari's pegmatites. The AfriTin lithium inferred resource is petalite, which according to them, is the "most abundant lithium-bearing mineral" on their licenses.
Askari want to be hitting spodumene (~8% Li2O) rather than petalite and lepidolite (~4-5% Li2O), as the latter will show up as a worse grade in both drilling and an MRE. Not to mention that the concentrate produced is relatively low grade.
While it's true that Afritin is getting offtake offers all over for their petalite concentrate, they might be producing that by the end of this year. It is less certain what the demand will be for the same when Askari would get to production.
The good news is that afritin's rock chips on their ML 134 (main tenement containing the mass of their 450kt lithium) only graded up to 0.9% Li2O, which makes Askari's 3.2% spod chips look quite nice.
In a perfect world, the thickness of Afritin's pegmatites will be replicated on Askari's tenement, but with spodumene mineralisation instead. In that scenario, we could eventually see drill intersections like these below, but with nicer grades. Pie in the sky of course, but not impossible (noting surface spodumene outcrops).
It's also worth noting that with the drill bit only going down to 60m in Phase 1, some of the juicy deeper mineralisation seen in ATM's pegs may be missed. Either way, with Chris Evans on the team, if there's lithium on the tenements. He'll find it all eventually.
I'll be doing some reading on Afritin's tenements over the next few weeks.
If you're interested, see the CPR in AfriTin's prospectus, relating to the geology and mineralisation of their tenements.
https://afritinmining.com/company-documents/c113510CCL.pdf
Unfortunately I didn't buy back at ~20c so I'm selfishly hoping for a pullback in the sp for an entry before late Feb
Good luck holders, hoping to join you soon.
