Bradda Head Lithium Ltd receives Basin East Extension permit

Highlights:

• Bradda Head has received permission to drill 120 holes at the Company’s BEE State Lease. Drilling of the first phase (20 holes) is expected to commence in September. 
• Sonic drilling, will be used, which has performed very well at the company’s clay assets this year, and also importantly uses far less water than traditional core drilling, whilst offering superior core recoveries for softer deposits like clay, enabling more accurate lithological domaining and assaying.
• Drilling will commence first at BEE with 20 holes. The company will then conduct analysis on the results to optimise the follow-up programmes, before commencing drilling 10 holes at Basin North (BN) where permits have already been received. 
• Previous drilling at the neighbouring BE claims (where Bradda has a 305 kt LCE JORC resource) indicated that the Upper Clay Zone which includes a higher-grade seam, thickened at the Northwest portion of BE, towards BEE (and Basin North (BN). 
• Drilling results from BEE are expected to feed into a revised resource estimate at the Basin Project expected towards the end of 2022/early 2023. This will also form part of the resource for our preliminary economic assessment (PEA), due to start in 2023. 
• Bradda is targeting to grow its resources at its Basin project this year with the upcoming drill programmes at BEE and BN. Bradda has two royalty payments due from expanding its resources at its clay claims. The next payment of US$2.5 million is paid on Bradda expanding its resource base to 1 million t lithium carbonate equivalent, and then the third payment of US$3 million is achieved when Bradda expands its resource base to 2.5 million t lithium carbonate equivalent. Bradda is working with its geologists to hit these targets as soon as is feasible with the programmes mentioned above and the planned programmes in 2023 at Basin West and Basin West Extension.

Charles FitzRoy, CEO of Bradda Head, commented:

“The award of the BEE drilling permit is yet another great piece of news for Bradda Head. Our decision to drill at BEE is based on a continuation of the exploration at Basin where we are aggressively targeting resource expansion, which will feed into a PEA we plan to commence in 2023. We have two significant resource expansion milestones at Basin, the first one being expanding our resource base to 1 million t lithium carbonate equivalent which will result in the second royalty payment of US$2.5 million from LRC and the second being hitting 2.5 million t lithium carbonate equivalent, which we expect to achieve once we get going at Basin West and Basin West Extension in 2023. All of this is underpinned by our exploration target, identified by SRK earlier this year, at Basin of up to 6 million t lithium carbonate equivalent.

“We are also busy with permit applications for other parts of the Basin Project, and will look to revise our resource estimate as soon is feasible. What is important to note is that we have commenced Phase two of our metallurgical testwork at Basin, and expect to release early results from it later this year. This is even more exciting following last week’s announcement that we have managed to use standard commercial equipment (Cyclone Classification) to pre-concentrate our clay as part of a follow-up programme from Phase 1 of our metallurgical testwork programme.

“Crucially, Bradda Head is fully-funded to complete the pipeline of planned exploration drilling, and we are confident that this current BEE programme will provide strong results to enable us to continue with our plans at Basin. Alongside of Basin we are also drilling at our San Domingo pegmatite district in Arizona, with results expected to follow very shortly.”

Read the article online at: https://www.globalminingreview.com/mining/07092022/bradda-head-lithium-ltd-receives-basin-east-extension-permit/