Who are Delta Lithium?Originally Delta Lithium were TNT Mines and then Red Dirt but I'll refer to them by Delta even when they were going by earlier names.
In September 2021 Delta reached an agreement to acquire a historical gold mine called Mt Ida. This was consistent with Delta's then origins as a gold explorer. Existing DD core's were not assayed for lithium and when they were, it was revealed that Mt Ida had a robust lithium deposit.
This was a game changer for Delta who raised additional money for a rapid exploration program. A Maiden JORC resource of 12.7Mt @ 1.2% was announced on 19 October 2022. This made Delta the most recent Lithium JORC resource in Australia. As per the graphic below, Mt Ida has a robust grade relative to several other projects in Australia and substantial expansion potential exists. At this stage is remains a relatively small project but at least at the time of writing it was larger than ESS's Pioneer Dome and LTR's Buldania in terms of contained resource.
The current plan for Mt Ida is to rapidly progress a DSO operation which will provide a source of cash flow for a Mt Ida concentrator plant & developing Yinnetharra. The historical mining that has occurred at Mt Ida means most of the permits needed for mining are already held and those still required are expected soon. In addition to Lithium, Mt Ida has a robust Tantalum resource at an average grade of 207 and a historical gold resource of 318,000t @ 13.8g/t of gold for 141koz. Gold and Tantalum provide potential byproduct credits that would keep the production cost for lithium lower than it would otherwise be.
In September 2022 Delta announced the acquisition of Yinnetharra tenements in north western WA (120km NE of Gascoyne Junction). Delta has been actively drilling a small area of Yinnetharra that had a small number of previous positive lithium drill results. Drilling is currently consistent with the M47, M36 and M1 pegmatites all having some meaningful lithium resource although as at 24 April there were 4,322 samples at the lab. Delta is very bullish around the potential size of Yinnetharra.
Across both Yinnetharra and Mt Ida, Delta plans to drill more than 100,000m over the remainder of 2023 so there is a current massive drilling program.
For those interested in following via Delta's website, details are below:
Delta Lithium » WA Lithium Exploration & Developmenthttps://deltalithium.com.au
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