Global Lithium Resources (ASX:GL1) reports a ‘game-changing’ updated JORC Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) for its two 100%-owned hard rock lithium projects in Western Australia.
In 2022, the growing multi-asset West Australian lithium company has performed large scale drilling programs across both its Manna Lithium Project in the Goldfields region and Marble Bar Lithium Project in the Pilbara region, which has enabled a significant upgrade to the company’s Global Mineral Resource.
Global Lithium Managing Director Ron Mitchell says: “These game-changing Mineral Resource upgrades, at our 100%-owned Western Australian hard-rock lithium projects, are a great outcome for GL1 following the nearly 85,000m exploration programs we have undertaken safely during 2022.
“These game-changing Mineral Resource upgrades, at our 100%-owned Western Australian hard-rock lithium projects, are a great outcome for GL1 following the nearly 85,000m exploration programs we have undertaken safely during 2022″
I am delighted to oversee such a significant increase in the Mineral Resource for the company across its portfolio. The GL1 geological team, drilling contractors, traditional owners and external advisors have all worked tirelessly over the last 11 months to deliver this result and I congratulate each and every one of them on the tremendous success of the campaign.
The Mineral Resource upgrade at Manna provides us with a compelling base to progress scoping and feasibility studies for the project, with a further Mineral Resource update expected in CY 2023. We are now in the fortunate position to own 100% of Manna following the consolidation of Breaker Resources’ 20% stake in November 2022. This provides us with maximum control and flexibility to expedite these studies with the goal of bringing Manna into production as soon as practicable. We expect to announce the results of the scoping study for Manna in Q1 next calendar year.
As we look forward, 2023 is shaping up as another step-change year for GL1.”
In November 2022, Global Lithium secured 100% ownership of Manna, located 100km east of Kalgoorlie. The company reports this acquisition increased the land holding area for Manna by nearly 5 times, allowing for a larger exploration campaign to be executed to locate additional drill targets for the Mineral Resource expansion drilling program that will continue throughout 2023.
The Manna Lithium deposit remains open in all directions and the current resource expansion drilling program will continue throughout 2023, with an additional 35,000m utilising both RC and DD drilling techniques planned.
During the 2022 drilling program more than 33,685m of reverse circulation drilling and 6,138m of diamond core was drilled across the deposit. The main focus of this program was to expand the maiden Mineral Resource of 9.9Mt @ 1.14% Li2O.
This was achieved by testing the deposit along strike in both directions and extending the known lithium-bearing pegmatites down dip. This drilling program proved to be extremely successful as demonstrated in this significant Mineral Resource upgrade.
Global Lithium says the current drilling program results included assays up to mid-November 2022 that were utilised in this current resource update with a large number of samples still to be assayed and incorporated into the model.
This with the additional surface expressions evident from this program, but as yet untested, have afforded the Global Lithium team significant scope for additional targets within the existing Manna Project Area to be tested as part of its planned 2023 resource update.
The diamond core collected from this year’s drilling program totalled 2,000kg of lithium bearing pegmatites across 20 drill holes, providing a complete set of representative core for the metallurgical testing program that will start in January 2023.
The Marble Bar Lithium Project (MBLP) is Global Lithium’s second 100% owned, JORC compliant lithium deposit. The MBLP is situated just 15km north from the town of Marble Bar, and 160km southeast from the port of Port Hedland, with a sealed road traversing through the large tenement package.
Within this drilling season, an additional 288 drillholes for a total of 45,528m of RC drilling were added to the resource database and this has increased the overall tonnage and an Indicated Resource has been defined within the area of infill drilling.
This exploration drilling is all within the original prospective Archer pegmatite corridor. The 2022 MBLP drilling program’s primary purpose was to test the extent of the lithium-bearing pegmatites in the area and to gain valuable knowledge of their formation that was used to expand the scope for more occurrences within the large tenement holding.
The 2022 exploration program has developed the MBLP into a much larger scale exploration project, with the prospective strike length expanding out to 25km length and containing four additional prospective pegmatite corridors each as large as the original Archer pegmatite corridor.
No additional diamond core was drilled at the MBLP this season due to large scale, parallel metallurgical test programs having been completed during the year using existing core from the Archer deposit. These 2 independent test programs achieved a lithium grade of 5.9% Li2O with a recovery of 76% through GR Engineering supervising the program run at NAGROM Labs in Australia3 and 5.76% with a recovery of 85% through BGRIMM Technology in China supervised by SRK Beijing.
A cut-off grade of 0.45% Li2O was selected to report the MBLP Mineral Resource at the SMU scale.
Write to Adam Orlando at Mining.com.au
Images: Global Lithium Ltd & iStock
