Bradda Head Lithium Ltd has increased the estimated resource of its Basin East site in Arizona by 65% and identified a new high-grade zone that it said has the potential to spread further across the licence.
“We've identified a high-grade zone which is of 1300 ppm which is a really solid grade,” said CEO Charles FitzRoy,
"And if it spreads into other areas it really changes the potential of the asset, he said in an interview.
Drilling, which was completed in November, expanded the JORC resource to 305,000 tons of lithium carbon equivalent (LCE) with a significant portion in the more certain indicated category.
An exploration target for the whole Basin Project licence put together by consultant SRK is now between 1-6mln tonnes of LCE, but that is just a small portion of the company's claims, FitzRoy said.
"The increase in LCE at Basin East and assessment of exploration potential is extremely encouraging and highlights the resource growth potential.
“The total drilled area at Basin East covers 2.4% of our 47km2, which previously only covered just under 2%.
"That's an increase of 120,000 of LCE over a drilled area increase of 0.2sq km.
“Evidence from drilling and geophysics suggests that this higher-grade Upper Clay layer could be relatively continuous, and we look forward to evaluating its potential further and following it into our other claims, where we believe it may also be present."
FitzRoy added that plans for 2022 include drilling at the Basin East Extension and Basin North, in addition to the work ongoing at its brine and hard rock lithium assets.