A lithium search on the edge of Pilbara Mineral’s world-class Pilgangoora district has turned up rich tantalum mineralisation for Kairos Minerals at its Lucky Sump prospect in the company’s Mt York project.
Kairos was on the hunt for more spodumene-bearing lithium-caesium-tantalum pegmatites at the project south of Port Hedland neighbouring Pilbara Minerals’ tier one Pilgangoora mine.
The 18-hole, 2613m RC drill campaign returned a headline result of 7m at 605ppm tantalum, 146ppm lithium and 81ppm caesium from 49 metres down including a 1m strike going 2143ppm tantalum and 1.91 per cent lithium oxide.
In further news for Kairos four new gold zones were also discovered at its Lucky Sump project highlighted by a 12m strike going 0.46 g/t gold from 140m which the company has flagged following up.
Kairos Managing Director Dr Peter Turner said "We have mapped more pegmatites north-west of Lucky Sump at our Zakanaka prospect within the fertile LCT-pegmatite zone and will continue to map the northern licence around our Iron Stirrup pit where significant lithium soil anomalies occur 1 km to the east of Pilbara Minerals’ Pilgangoora pits.”
“While we continue to do the necessary fieldwork at Mt York for lithium, we are also driving forward with lithium exploration at our Roe Hills Project, 100km east of Kalgoorlie in a developing lithium district hosting the significant Manna Li-Ta deposit.”
Further gold hits include a 1m strike going 2.66 g/t from 66m and 1m going 2.18 g/t from 122m opening the prospect of recovering the precious metal from any future development.
Kairos is now planning to map out its northern licence in 2023 where high-priority lithium targets have been pinned 1km east of Pilgangoora.
The explorer’s peggings sit directly east and south of the 309Mt at 1.14 per cent lithium oxide Pilgangoora operation which unlocked the region’s lithium industry.
Mt York started life in 1994 as a gold mine and is estimated to contain a 1.1-million-ounce resource and Kairos is now putting the project through a pre-feasibility study to crank it back to life.
The spodumene-bearing nature of the deposit was discovered recently by Kairos and is being weighed up as a possible value-add option for the site.
The Pilgangoora mine has turned Pilbara Minerals into an ASX200 company in the space of six years, exploding from 27c in 2016 to $5.60 at its peak this year before retracing to about $3.90 and boasting an $11.5bn market cap.
Demand for lithium is booming on the back of the electric vehicle revolution and tantalum’s use as a high-capacity electrical storage device has demand forecast to grow from 1887t to at least 2440t by 2028 according to Precision Business Insights.
Outside of Kairos’ Pilbara operations a deep soil sampling push will get underway at Roe Hills near Kalgoorlie as the company pokes around for lithium in the Goldfields too.
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By Matt Birney
