Emerging green metals player Global Lithium Resources Ltd (GLR) finished 2022 with something of a bang and now looks set to generate some mouth-watering news during the coming year.
In mid-December the ASX-listed junior announced it had increased the combined lithium oxide resource at its wholly-owned Manna and Marble Bar projects in its home state of Western Australia by a whopping 148.5 per cent, with the company now boasting an overall “transformative” inventory of 50.7 million tonnes grading 1 per cent.
The following day GLR told the market it had launched a scoping study for Manna, with the aim of defining its process and non-process infrastructure requirements, on top of estimating the capital and operating costs needed for the undertaking.
According to the company, the outcomes of this preliminary due diligence will form the basis for a subsequent feasibility study, whilst also providing the key risks and opportunities to be targeted.
Located some 100 kilometres east of Kalgoorlie-Boulder in WA’s Goldfields, Manna contains a mineral resource estimate of 32.7 Mt at 1 per cent lithium oxide.
Earlier (in February 2022) this figure was 9.9 Mt at 1.14 per cent, indicating the company had since been busy in the field.
Indeed, during last year’s field program the targeted area was subjected to more than 33,685 metres of reverse circulation and 6,138m of diamond drilling.
This was conducted to test the deposit along strike in both directions while extending the known outcropping lithium-bearing pegmatites ‒ the ore body’s host ‒ down dip.
These pegmatites cover a 5 by 1.5km area, and deeper drilling has suggested the resource could be further increased as there was an indication that some pegmatite bodies may coalesce and widen at depth.
For the time being, though, a cut-off grade of 0.6 per cent lithium oxide has been chosen to represent the portion of any economic mineral resource which may be targeted by an open pit operation.
According to GLR, this figure is “commensurate” with those applied for the reporting of lithium resources hosted in spodumene-rich pegmatites elsewhere in Australia that also have “reasonable prospects of extraction by open pit mining”.
The deposit remains open in all directions and the current resource expansion drilling program will continue throughout 2023, with the addition of 35,000m of RC and diamond core.
GLR acquired full ownership of the project in November – a deal which increased Manna’s real estate in the area nearly five-fold and, according to one fund manager, set the scene for potential rapid development, especially as the junior enjoyed the support of some corporate strategic partners.
At least this was how Argonaut Funds Management put it back in November, which listed lithium hydroxide producer Yibin Tianyi, diversified miner Minerals Resources Ltd and Korean electric vehicle battery cell manufacturer SK On as the explorer’s main backers.
When it came to the Manna scoping study, the company said it would include preliminary mechanical design (including major equipment sizing and a mechanical
equipment list, as well as electrical load estimates); early general site arrangement drawings (such as mine and mine infrastructure, processing facilities, non-process infrastructure and site access); a logistics study to define key transport corridors, outline infrastructure access and capacity, and; an initial hydrology study to assess site water quality and availability.
The results of this first step of due diligence are expected during the current quarter.
Meanwhile, at Marble Bar – located just 15km north of the historic Pilbara namesake town – 45,528m of RC drilling (288 holes) conducted during 2022 allowed GLR to increase its mineral resource, by an impressive 71 per cent, to 18 Mt at 1 per cent lithium oxide.
In its mid-December release to the market, the junior said the field program’s primary purpose was to test the extent of the lithium-bearing pegmatites in the area and “gain valuable knowledge of their formation that was used to expand the scope for more occurrences within the large tenement holding”.
As a result, the work had developed Marble Bar into a much larger scale exploration project, with the prospective strike length expanding out to 25km and containing four additional prospective pegmatite corridors ‒ each as large as the originally-targeted Archer.
Furthermore, parallel metallurgical testing was completed during the year using existing core from what is now the Archer deposit.
GLR said two independent processing programs averaged a lithium oxide grade of 5.9 per cent, with a recovery of 76 per cent by an Australian lab and an 85 per cent one using Chinese technology.
The junior was now confident this test work demonstrated that the lithium-bearing pegmatites at Marble Bar could be processed to meet industry standards for a spodumene concentrate.
