Lithium wrap: Piedmont gets ‘potentially transformational’ results, Liontown discovers something new
Mining
Mining
Piedmont (ASX:PLL) is drilling fresh discoveries at its namesake North Carolina project and hitting high grade lithium in every hole.
Drilling in the ‘Central’ prospect returned the thickest high-grade intercept reported on the project so far — 43.2m at 1.73 per cent Li2O.
Inside this intercept was a very high grade 10.5 metre interval grading 2.29 per cent Li2O.
Piedmont is aiming to release a maiden resource estimate for Central prospect by April and an updated resource at the Core prospect by June.
The ongoing drilling at Core could considerably expand the 13-year project life, as reported in the September 2018 scoping study.
Piedmont boss Keith D. Phillips says Core will continue to grow in size, while the results from Central were “potentially transformational” for the project.
“With a maiden resource for Central now planned for next month and an updated resource at Core expected in by June, we believe Piedmont will soon be positioned as one of the largest hard-rock lithium projects in North America,” he says.
In Western Australia, up-and-comer Liontown (ASX:LTR) is now sitting on a large 4.5km by 2.5km lithium soil anomaly (more than 100 parts per million) at its Buldania project in the Eastern Goldfields.
This is after fresh soil sampling confirmed the prospectivity in a new area, about 5-10km from its Anna discovery.
Geological mapping will help accurately define pegmatites (the main source of hard rock lithium) in this new area prior to initial drilling in the second quarter.
In 2018, drilling at Anna hit significant lithium over a 1.3km area, but Liontown didn’t find the end — mineralisation remains open to the south-east and at depth.
A fresh 8000-10,000m drilling campaign is scheduled to kick off at Anna very soon which will help the explorer establish a maiden resource estimate.