Si6 Metals has received the green light from shareholders to acquire a 50 per cent share in four Brazilian projects covering 10 exploration licenses and form a joint venture (JV) with seller Foxfire Metals.
The company has agreed to the final terms for the purchase, which sees it pick up the half share in tenements covering 17,000 hectares across three Brazilian States prospective for lithium, rare earths, gold, base metals and platinum group elements (PGE).
Foxfire will manage the JV and will be free-carried until the completion of a bankable feasibility study, with Si6 committed to spend $1 million in the first year of the combined operation. One of the key acquisitions is in the Brazilian State of Minas Gerais – which contains the biggest lithium reserves in that country – mostly within the Jequitinhonha Valley area where Si6 will establish its stronghold with four new tenements.
Significant lithium discoveries have been made in Minas Gerais, including Canadian company Sigma Lithium’s massive Grota do Cirilo lithium project that is reported to contain a mineral resource of 85.6 million tonnes at 1.43 per cent lithium oxide. Grota do Cirilo is believed to be among the biggest and highest-grade hard-rock lithium deposits on the planet, with excellent metallurgy and low impurities.
Upon full production, Sigma has modelled a 766,000 tonnes per year output, which will place it among the top five lithium producers in the world. It shipped its first battery-grade lithium concentrate from Grota do Cirilo to the market in May last year.
Two of Si6’s newly-acquired tenements sit in the South Minas Gerais Caldera area near Meteoric Resources’ mineral resource estimate of 409 million tonnes going 2626 parts per million total rare earth oxides (TREO). It is referred to as “the world’s highest-grade ionic-adsorption clay rare earths discovery”. The tenements also neighbour Viridis Mining & Minerals’ rare earths project in the same complex.
Another two of the Si6 sites are based in the north-east in the Ceará Pedra Brancha in the Borborema Structural Province in Ceará State. The project areas sit adjacent to ValOre Metals’ inferred mineral resource estimate of 2.2 million ounces of palladium, in addition to platinum and gold in 63.6 million tonnes of ore grading 1.08g/t.
Several of the mineralised zones remain wide open for expansion in future drill programs and the company has more than 20 exploration targets and several additional untested anomalies throughout the district.
One piece of Si6 ground is in a vastly underexplored 40-square-kilometre patch of the Southern Amazon near the town of Apuí – known locally for historical gold mining and the site of a gold rush on the Juma River in 2007. A reverse-circulation (RC) test hole drilled there by Foxfire to 88m returned anomalous rare earths mineralisation from surface to the end-of-hole.
Although reasonably unexplored, the Amazon tenement is only about 15km from Apuí, where excellent infrastructure can support operations including direct access to the highway, a commercial airport and a river port.
Si6 Metals managing director Jim Malone said: “The Board of Si6 is thrilled that our shareholders have approved the acquisition of the Brazil assets and the Company is excited to commence an exploration program initially at the highly-prospective Caldera REE Project nearby significant REE discoveries recently made by Meteoric and Viridis. The Lithium Valley Project is also of equal interest to us as it is located amongst Tier 1 discoveries by Latin Resources and Sigma Lithium to name a few, close to S-Type G4 Supersuite granites that are typically known to host lithium in spodumene-bearing pegmatites.”
The acquisition is scheduled to be formally completed upon the lodgement of transfers of the tenements for registration with the Brazilian mining regulator. Once formalised, Si6 is expected to kick off an exploration program in Brazil early this year, with a focus on the Caldera licences including reconnaissance, mapping and soil sampling.
A follow-up auger drilling program is also planned to begin at priority targets. Additional exploration will focus on the licences in Minas Gerais near the Grota Do Cirilo and Colina lithium projects respectively owned by Sigma Lithium and Latin Resources.
The formation of the new JV adds to Si6’s already impressive portfolio, which contains several projects in Botswana with its Djibete, Airstrip and Maibele North operations, in addition to its Monument project in Western Australia.
The company’s Maibele project in Botswana has an inferred resource of 2.38 million tonnes going 0.72 per cent nickel and 0.21 per cent copper, with 0.1 grams per tonne gold, 0.08g/t platinum, 0.36g/t palladium, 0.04g/t rhodium and 0.05g/t ruthenium.
The company’s wholly–owned Monument project near Laverton in WA’s Goldfields region contains 3.3 million tonnes grading 1.4g/t gold for a 154,000-ounce resource.
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By Michael Philipps
