Lithium Australia confirms high-grade pegmatites at Ravensthorpe
THE DRILL SERGEANT: Lithium Australia (ASX-LIT) has taken receipt of assay results from maiden rock-chip sampling and mapping carried out at the company’s 100 per cent-owned Ravensthorpe project, west of Esperance in southern Western Australia.
LIT claims the results have confirmed the presence of high-grade lithium pegmatites.
The company focussed the recent fieldwork on detailed examination of known lithium pegmatites.
The project contains a mix of simple, barren quartz-feldspar muscovite pegmatites, zoned barren quartz-feldspar-muscovite-schorl pegmatites and zoned lithium pegmatites.
The lithium pegmatites contain the lithium mica minerals lepidolite and zinnwaldite, as massive pods and disseminations within quartz-lepidolite core-zones
A total of 21 rock-chip samples were collected (R001 to R021) from pegmatites, mostly from areas known as Quarry and Horseshoe, which were the main areas of interest in this initial fieldwork.
Most (19) of the samples were of lithium mineralisation but two samples were of mica that previous explorers had identified as zinnwaldite but that appeared more likely to be muscovite.
The assay results confirmed that the mica was not zinnwaldite.
According to Lithium Australia the assay results confirm the pink, purple, lilac or grey micas to be lithium enriched.
“It is surprising that such prospective pegmatites have had such little recent evaluation,” Lithium Australia managing director Adrian Griffin said in the company’s announcement to the Australian Securities Exchange.
“The area has the potential to add significant quantities of lithium mica to our inventory and become an integral part of our plan to establish a processing facility for lithium micas in Western Australia using ground-breaking, low-energy processing technologies to recover lithium as carbonate or hydroxide for the battery industry.”
Email: info@lithium-au.com
Website: www.lithium-au.com