Battery Age Minerals has the experience and the assets to carve a nice slice out of critical metals markets

Battery Age Minerals is confident its Falcon Lake lithium project in Canada could potentially be one of the best placed assets to access the North American Electric Vehicle (EV) market.

To date, maiden drilling has already intersected spodumene-bearing pegmatites in 10 out of the 13 diamond holes drilled which highlights potential for significant mineralisation at the project.

Assays are pending, with the plan now to continue drilling in this area in the near term before moving to the other spodumene-bearing pegmatite outcrops identified across the property.

“We have mineralisation, we have spodumene on our property, we now need to figure out how much,” Battery Age Minerals (ASX:BM8) CEO Gerard O’Donovan said.

“We’ve identified multiple outcropping pegmatites with spodumene, and we are drill testing those.

“We don’t want to do a program and rest on our laurels – we want to ensure that the drill rig is constantly turning, is constantly being utilized and in a cost-effective fashion.”

The company’s 90%-owned Falcon Lake project covers 42.8km2 in a Tier 1 mining jurisdiction close to several other lithium explorers and developers such as fellow Australian Green Technology Metals, which has already defined a resource of 9.9Mt grading 1.04% Li2O at its nearby Seymour Lake project.

Historical drilling at the site has already returned outstanding assay results such as 24.4m at 1.48% Li2O.

Route to market a big tick

Falcon Lake is also in a great jurisdiction in northwest Ontario and has key access points to the North American ‘electric highway’.

“We’re on a highly prospective Greenstone belt, and we’re really close to the Trans-Canadian rail line that connects to all major Canadian cities, and that goes down into Windsor and Detroit and into the electric highway where major EV manufacturing plants are being constructed,” O’Donovan said.

“There’s also the proposed Little Jackfish hydropower station really close to the site as well, which at some point during the project lifecycle should improve economic green power, which is a big tick.

“And the project is three and a half hours from Thunder Bay, we can access the property all year round, we don’t need helicopter access.

“It’s not a remote asset by any stretch of the imagination and that’s beneficial from an exploration perspective but it’s also beneficial from the point of view of having a route to market should we prove to have an economic resource.”

Looking through a long-term development lens

The company has also kicked off baseline fieldwork at Falcon Lake, which will provide a comprehensive overview of the environmental conditions at the project which will support environmental assessments and environmental permitting.

“The reason for that is twofold, the first of which is to work with our First Nations groups around protecting environmental interests, which is of significant importance to them,” O’Donovan said.

“And secondly, we want to start gathering data as quickly as possible, even before we’ve proven the fact that we have an economical resource. We don’t want to leave it to fate and be stuck with a long permitting time frame, post having success – so it’s a reasonable investment for us right now to do that.

“We’re an early exploration company and we also are looking at this through the lens of a development piece and seeing what we can do in the early days to ensure that we get maximum bang for buck and that we keep the project moving forward.”

Experienced team in the lithium space

O’Donovan also pointed to the management teams’ extensive experience in the lithium sector as really differentiating BM8 from its peers.

“We have a team that’s done it all before, that’s been in the lithium game for a considerable period of time that being myself, ex-Pilbara Minerals (ASX:PLS) NIgel Broomham, who was head of geology at Pilgangoora for PLS, and Paul Hughes as CFO who is ex-PLS as well,” he said.

“We’re not green to the industry, we’re not green to the metal, and we’re not green to exploration and/or production and development.”

Germanium exposure a bonus

Just last week the company staked additional claims to the west-northwest of its existing earn-in claims at the Bleiberg zinc-lead-germanium Project in southern Austria.

The new ground covers potential extensions of the historical mine, which was a major producer of zinc, lead and was one of the largest germanium producers in the world that was renowned for its high-grade mineralistion when in production.

Germanium has a wide range of uses such as electronics, where it is a crucial component in the production of semi-conductors, and also in the production of high-quality optical fibres, which are widely used in telecommunications for data transmission.

It also has excellent optical properties in the infrared range, making it valuable for thermal imaging systems, night vision devices and other infrared optics applications.

Other uses include usage as a substrate material in certain types of solar cells, particularly in high efficiency multijunction photovoltaic cells and as catalysts in the production of various types of plastics and elastomers.

“We have a copper project in Morocco, and we also have a lead-zinc-germanium Bleiberg project in Austria,” O’Donovan said.

“We’re one of two companies that’s on the ASX with germanium exposure, and it’s very topical right now with Xi Jinping and the Chinese government having imposed restrictions on the export of gallium and germanium.

“We are continuing to progress works on that project to understand what the next steps are and it’s fielding a lot of interest purely because of its very successful production rates of up to 200ppm germanium as a by-product of lead-zinc.

“While we are very much focused on Falcon Lake at the moment we’re not sitting on our other projects, they’re moving forward as well, and they can also add significant value to the business.”

This article was developed in collaboration with Battery Age Minerals Limited, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.