@Red BaronI was not aware of IGO's report. Thanks for that. However the Greenbushes resources is known for more than 30 years and the all structures there were known. I have done a lot of work on it before. You can see the same numbers I gave on LTR's DFS preso on Nov.2021.
360mt at 1.50% is the old resource actually plus the new drilling they made on Kapanga zone which was considered as rehabilitation zone on the enviromental report I have IMO. I thuink they got a permit to drill that zone by their desperation and found 42mt according to the report shown below.
The tricky part on IGO's report;
They normally used to say 170mt at 2.00%, but now apparently IGO has converted it to 294mt at 1.50%. (plus converted the 42mt at 1.8% and found 360mt at 1.5%). But only IGO is doing that, not the other JV partners. IGO is doing it for reporting high resources to its shareholders IMO.
Because the that is the resource of existing C3 area which is being mined for years. It has the high grade ore. The resource there can't be upgraded as it's drilled long time ago.
This map is from IGOs report on jan. 2022. Yellow marking is mine.
They also added the tailings which was accumulated long time ago when they were mining tantalum and tin. I know well that extracting lithium from tailings is times more expensive than extracting from ore. So that's another BS. (See the tailings resource of Greenbushes was excluded in LTR's table).
Also on this map the central lode marking is wrong.
There are three zones in that Central lode area; C3, C2 and C1. Se below map what they mean. C1 and C2 are useless and no lithium extraction can be made from them. (Cornwall pit is the very old tantalum tin pit)
Only C3 area has good high grade lithium and it's the current pit which is being mined atm.
So IGO is overstating the resource.
This is the resource table IGO made. Central lode.
See how they are converting the old 174mt 2.0% resource to 294mt 1.5% resource without resource upgrade.
Only Kapanga is new there.
This is the map I have found and modified long time ago. I made some markings to show you. The new Kapanga pegmatite was a lso known long time ago but was not included in the resource by a reason before. I think desperation got them to do that.
See the area which was marked as central zone on IGO's map is actually has 3 zones; C3, C2 and C1.
It's know that the lithium grade at c2 is lower than 1%. So they don't mine it.
The C1 pit was mined for its kaolin for years as well. The lithium was leached by weathering and kaolin left there.
So they only have the old but current mining pit C3 zone and Kapanga which is the new area.
This cross section is also from IGO's report. Black markings are mine.
As you can see on C3 pit they are mining very high grade ore. That is going to come an end soon. There is no such high grade in the Kapanga zone. and they have open a 250mt deep pit there for a small resource. It'll be an expensive operation.
also as the last word, this project belongs to 3 companies. They have to share this resource. That is a serious issue for them .
LTR owns 100& of its 156mt at 1.4%.
That's the main advantage.
(20min delay)