Eye on Lithium: Things are brewing in Canada, eh?

• Quebec’s lithium industry is marching on; neighbouring Ontario looks to catch up
• ASX juniors and developers keep throwing their chips into pots of maple syrup
• Explorers doing what they do best, explore

All your lithium news, Tuesday, June 6.

Not since the beginning of an ongoing feud between the Toronto Maple Leafs vs Montreal Canadiens – known as the Habs – has there ever been such a rivalry between Ontario and Quebec; that is, until, the rise of the lithium industry.

Both provinces are taking their gloves off the hockey field and onto the mine site, as they look to consolidate large endowments of the battery metal for both production and processing.

Starting at an advantage over its noisy neighbour is Quebec, which has one of the hottest developing lithium regions on the planet – James Bay.

Almost two weeks ago to the day, one of Canada’s largest producers, Nemaska Lithium, signed an 11-year deal to supply up to 13,000t of refined lithium (LiHO) annually to carmaker Ford from its Whabouchi mine and Becancour conversion plant in the James Bay Region, pegged to begin production from 2025.

“The Nemaska lithium project will be a sustainable source of lithium, supporting Ford’s ability to scale and helping us make EVs more accessible and affordable over time to millions of customers,” Ford EV Industrialisation VP Lisa Drake said in a presser.

Allkem (ASX:AKE) is also developing its own mine in the region, together with a flurry of ASX-listed companies such as Rubix Resources (ASX:RB6), Winsome Resources (ASX:WR1), Recharge Metals (ASX:REC), Patriot Battery Metals (ASX:PMT) and Discovery Alaska (ASX:DAF) – just to name a few.  

Meanwhile, in Ontario, Blaze Minerals (ASX:BLZ), is sidling up next to C$450 million capped TSX.V-listed Frontier Lithium and its 50mt PAK and Spark projects – the leaders in the province.

Battery Age Minerals (ASX:BG8) and Green Technology Metals (ASX:GT1) also have exploration projects in Ontario around Lake Seymour.

READ: Every man and his dog is looking for lithium in Canada right now. Which ASX companies have joined the craze?

Additionally, there are a sizeable number of TSX-V, AIM and LSE-listed companies probing Ontario’s lithium endowments.

With all that in mind, the Ontario government is aiming to establish its own end-to-end EV supply chain in the province to help position Canada to become a global player in the supply of the materials necessary for EV production and battery manufacturing.

Volkswagen, Stellantis (with LG) have already signed on to establish two battery cell manufacturing plants and Belgium’s Umicore has invested $1.5 billion in setting up a cathode active material facility.

To squeeze value between the raw material production and battery manufacturing the Ontarians are building up in their region, they’ll need to squeeze in a crucial part of the supply chain – the refinement of lithium hydroxide.

Ontario Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade Vic Fedeli was quoted saying “To be able to build a battery, we now need…cathode, anode, separator, copper foil, aluminum foil and lithium hydroxide.”

“There are six companies that we need in Ontario right now,” Fedeli said.

And out of those six, it’s lithium hydroxide refinement that he points to as a priority. 

“We’re almost there in getting the lithium out of the ground. Then we envision things like the lithium conversion facility making lithium hydroxide that every lithium-ion battery today it’s going to need. That is all coming.”

Here’s how Aussie lithium stocks are tracking:

37 lithium companies on the ASX were up today, 68 broke even, and 44 dropped into the minus.

WHO’S GOT NEWS OUT?

FUTURE BATTERY MINERALS (ASX:FBM)

FBM is looking to extend mineralisation it hit during a Phase 1 drilling program at its Nevada lithium project, bringing in a much bigger drill rig so it can better realise the potential resource it has on its hands.

A Schramm 685 rig is already spinning.

The explorer is targeting extensions of thick lithium claystone it intercepted at the Western Flats prospect earlier this year, which included hits of 109.7m @ 766 parts per million (ppm) Li from 135.6m depth to end-of-hole, including 29m @ 1,010ppm Li from a depth of 210.3m at hole WF23-011, where mineralisation remains open.

The significant intercept has the potential to extend and shallow towards the Lone Mountain prospect, as well as newly staked claims contiguous to Western Flats. 

“The programme is a very important next step in the company’s exploration of the Nevada lithium project as we increase our understanding of the potential scale of this mineralisation,” FBM technical director Robin Cox said.

MANHATTAN CORPORATION (ASX:MHC)

MHC has confirmed spodumene is in abundance at its recently acquired Chebogue lithium project in Nova Scotia, Canada.

The explorer found large, coarse-grained spodumene-bearing boulders in glacial tills at the BP target area that are almost identical to Champlain Mineral Ventures’ Brazil Lake lithium project immediately to the south, which has measured and indicated resources of 555,300t at 1.3% Li2O and 381,000t at 1.48% Li2O respectively.

Consultant geologist Dr Jacob Hanley positively identified huge spodumene separates in the five selected samples provided by the company.

While assays are pending to show more definitive results, the team at MHC are confident in what they’ve already uncovered.

“This is the first discovery of spodumene-bearing pegmatites in southwest Nova Scotia since the nearby Brazil Lake Lithium deposit discovery in 1960,” MHC country manager Paul Smith said.

“This discovery of spodumene-bearing pegmatite boulders at the BP target area is a strong indication that additional pegmatites will occur along this ~4-kilometre-wide stratigraphic sequence of metavolcanic and metasediments.”

The company reckons Chebogue could be an attractive development, as infrastructure such as all-weather roads, an airport, power grids, wind plants and a short 25km to deep sea shipping facilities at Yarmouth Port.

VOLTAIC STRATEGIC RESOURCES (ASX:VSR)

VSR is ready to hard-rock some lithium at its Ti Tree project in WA’s Gascoyne region.

A 3,000m Phase 2 drilling program aims to further prove up pegmatite intercepts it struck last month at its Andrada and Morpheus prospects. 

Both targets are located within the Volta Corridor – a major belt of lithium-bearing pegmatites where a whopping 90,000m drill program is underway at Delta Lithium’s nearby Yinnetharra project. 

VSR chief Michael Walshe said phase 1 drilling “barely scratched the surface in terms of understanding the depth and scale potential of our tenure.”

“Our initial rock chip sampling campaigns identified >300 pegmatites across our ‘Volta Corridor’ and confirmed that several of them are geochemically ‘fertile’ for LCT mineralisation,” Walshe said.

“Phase 1 drilling confirmed that many of these pegmatites have significant size potential, and we still have not identified their structural bounds.

“Following the extremely strong level of support for the $7m placement, we are now well funded to realise our ambitious plans to vector to the best part of our tenure at Ti Tree.”

BURLEY MINERALS (ASX:BUR)

BUR’s foray into Quebec is looking quite peachy after assays from its first three drill holes at the Chubb lithium project came back confirming >1.2% Li2O spodumene mineralisation. 

Intersections of note include 8.2m at 1.31% Li2O from 130.4m, including 4.2m at 1.93% Li2O and 7.7m at 1.30% Li2O from 80.1m, including 3.0m at 1.81% Li2O.

The Main Dyke prospect is interpreted as a tabular, continuous spodumene pegmatite with a strike length of at least 560m, extending down 200m from surface.

With an extra $4.5m in the bank after a recent cap raise, BUR is well-funded to continue exploration work and will resume diamond drilling later this month to test for extensions both along strike and down depth.

“The receipt of such highly encouraging results in such a short period of time is a major milestone for [us] following the recent acquisition of the Chubb lithium project in February this year,” BUR chair Bryan Dixon said.

“The new drilling intersections build on a high-grade spodumene zone identified in mapping and subsequently in drilling undertaken in 2021 and 2022, and the company is eagerly anticipating the remaining assay results from the current programme during June.”

At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While Burley Minerals, Manhattan Corporation, Voltaic Strategic Resources and Future Battery Minerals are Stockhead advertisers, they did not sponsor this article.