Galileo Resources PLC (AIM:GLR) said it has appointed an independent battery metals consultant to assess the results of initial exploration of the Kamativi licence in western Zimbabwe, which identified a number of what are felt to be significant lithium, tin and rare earth element anomalies.
The company has an option to earn an 80% interest through spending a combined total of US$1.5mln on exploration and evaluation at the Kamativi project area and over the Bulawayo gold-nickel property by July 2024.
The licence at Kamativi covers a 520 square kilometre area adjacent to the former Kamativi mine, where much tin and tantalum was extracted over seven decades up until 1994 from pegmatites containing tin, lithium, caesium and tantalum, and where an indicated mineral resource of 26.3mln tonnes was declared in 2018, at 0.58% lithium oxide, 493 parts per million (ppm) tin oxide, 41 ppm tantalum pentoxide and 65 ppm niobium pentoxide for the Kamativi tailings project.
Galileo chairman Colin Bird said the reconnaissance programme over the prospective lithium terrain, comprising stream sediment, rock chip and soil sampling, saw 4,359 samples collected, of which 1,282 were sent for laboratory analysis.
A consultant from ERM Group’s CSA Global has been commissioned to assess the results and accompanying datasets and the company said it will announce the next steps for the area once this assessment concludes.
Bird said the programme has identified “several significant targets in a number of areas within the licence where the peak analytical values, metal associations and continuity are sufficiently coherent to allow us to plan an early follow-up programme including trenching and, where warranted, drilling, with the programme to be guided by CSA's assessment”.
“This initial campaign has been extremely encouraging pointing us to a number of high potential areas associated with the productive Kamativi pegmatite terrain and we look forward to advancing this project at a time when Zimbabwe and lithium are very much in the global spotlight linked to new age metals," he added.
The initial sampling results were divided into four zone, with the first finding pegmatite swarms with individual pegmatites up to 30 metres wide revealing what was said to be a “coherent” in-soil anomaly extending over 1.2 kilometres (km) with a width of 300 metres (m) to 500m and a peak lithium in-soil content of 880 ppm, with a further 1.5 km extension (to the limit of laboratory assays) with peak lihium in soil content of 1,000 ppm.
The second zone’s rock chip sampling found 820 ppm lithium, 372 ppm caesium and 617 ppm tin from pegmatites, while in the third and fourth returned anomalous tin and lithium values peaked at 0.2% and 1060 ppm respectively.