Future Battery expands Big Red lithium pegmatite potential

Future Battery Minerals has delivered more high-grade phase-three infill and step-out reverse-circulation (RC) and diamond drill results, including 3m at 1.5 per cent lithium oxide from 37m at its Big Red prospect in Western Australia’s Goldfields region.

The company’s latest results from its Kangaroo Hills lithium project, 17km south of Coolgardie, also included a 1m hit at 0.5 per cent lithium oxide at Big Red and 1m at 0.52 per cent lithium oxide from 119m from its Rocky prospect.

Rocky adjoins Big Red to the south-west and Future Battery has identified up to four thin lithium-caesium-thallium (LCT)–bearing pegmatite lenses stacked in the footwall beneath the shallow, north-dipping Big Red pegmatite that has a true width of 24m, an east-west dimension of 230m to 400m and north-south strike depth potential of 2.2km. Management believes the potential for defining a large-tonnage, high-grade resource going more than 1 per cent lithium oxide and amenable to open-pit mining is high.

Critically, the shallow, thick high-grade lithium mineralisation at Big Red remains wide open along strike to the north and at depth.

In addition, the company has undertaken detailed regional induced-polarisation (IP) geophysical surveys to define areas of high resistivity, which correlate well to mapped surface pegmatites at Western Grey and Quokka, north-west and west of Big Red, respectively. Additional new resistivity drill targets have been defined at Whip Tail, Big Red West (500m west of Big Red) and Big Red North and the total area of elevated resistivity exceeds 1.6km east-west and 2.2km north-south.

Cox says the company is now keen to drill the northern areas of the ground during the current quarter once it has received final permitting, following flora and heritage surveys alongside the area’s Marlinyu Ghoorlie traditional owners. Metallurgical testwork results on high-grade LCT-bearing pegmatite ore are also imminent.

Future Battery seems well advanced in its quest to define a high-graded, large-tonnage lithium oxide resource at Big Red that it believes will be amenable to low-cost, open-pit extraction in an area with excellent existing infrastructure.

And the company is bounding into 2024 with a mission to prove its theory to be correct.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@wanews.com.au