Latin’s ongoing drill campaign has highlighted just how rich its Salinas lithium project in Brazil really is with recent holes intersecting thick, spodumene rich pegmatites at the Colina West deposit.

The intersected pegmatites – for which assays are still pending – extend the high-grade footprint at Colina West to over 500m along strike and 300m updip, raising the likelihood that the deposit will be a major contributor to the upcoming Salinas resources upgrade.

Further support for this belief comes from drilling in late 2022 which confirmed the high-grade mineralisation envelope at Colina West with notable assays of 20.7m at 1.51% Li2O from a down-hole depth of 159m (SADD061), 10m at 1.13% Li2O from 149.51m (SADD062) as well as multiple intercepts such as 18.89m at 1.56% Li2O from 356.91m and 16.43m at 1.69% Li2O from 323.57m (SADD070).

These results at Colina West also provide further credence to Latin Resources’ (ASX:LRS) decision earlier this month to substantially extend its landholding by applying for over 17 new exploration applications covering over 29,940 hectares.

“These results continue to confirm the exceptional prospectivity of the Latin landholding, and the potential to expand our mineral resource inventory,” geology manager Tony Greenaway said.

He noted that the outstanding pegmatite intersections in new drill cores from the 2023 campaign supports the company’s current interpretation of mineralisation, with the emergence of a clear, thick, plunging high‐grade envelope at Colina West which remains open in all directions.

“We are seeing a significant increase in the abundance and thickness of spodumene pegmatites developed at Colina West, with this emerging priority area now extending over 500m along strike and 300m up‐dip,” he added.

“We will continue to target this area with more drilling to ascertain its limits and to provide sufficient drill coverage to include this area in our planned Mineral Resource update scheduled for the second quarter of this year.”

Extensive drill program

The company’s 2023 drill program totalling 65,000m is aimed at fast tracking the growth of the Colina indicated and inferred mineral resource as well as defining a maiden resource at Colin West.

Drilling is currently on track with over 3,000m completed to date and the last of the eight diamond rigs expected to arrive on site in late February to early March.

Six of these rigs are focused on delineating the resource at Colina West.

Latin plans to add two reverse circulation rigs which will be tasked with completing rapid step‐out drill fences to define the prospective lithium corridor further to the west and southwest of the known Colina/Colina West mineralisation.

It may also use RC drilling as a first pass exploration tool to test mapped pegmatites, or geochemical anomalies where there is no physical outcrop such as at Salinas South.

Salinas project

Both Colina and Colina West are located within the company’s flagship Salinas project, which is about 10km from the town of Salinas in the Bananal Valley in Brazil.

Colina currently has a current resource of  13.3 million tonnes grading 1.2% Li2O while Colina West was previously known to host multiple spodumene bearing pegmatites.

Besides the current resource expansion and definition program, Latin is also looking to deliver further resource upgrades this year.

The recent move to pick up more exploration licences will increase the size of Salinas by 367% to 38,000 hectares.

 

 

 

This article was developed in collaboration with Latin Resources, 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.

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