Lithium Australia is now the sole owner of the Sadisdorf lithium project in far east Germany where the ASX listed company’s recent maiden drilling program returned very wide intersections of lithium mineralisation.
The ownership change comes after the Upper Mining Authority of Saxony approved the transfer of the project licences to the company’s wholly owned German subsidiary Trilithium Erzgebirge.
It also includes the Hegelshöhe exploration licence.
Lithium Australia will now pay Germany’s Tin International AG €2m in cash and scrip for the 100% interests in the Sadisdorf and Hegelshöhe licences.
The acquisition replaces the JV agreement from May last year, which stipulated that the company could earn a 15 percent interest in the project by spending €750,000.
Sadisdorf has an inferred resource of 25 million tonnes at 0.45% lithium oxide contained within alteration around tin mineralisation
The project is located in the state of Saxony in eastern Germany, in close proximity to Duetsche Lithium’s Zinnwald deposit and European Metals’ massive Cinovec deposit that sits directly across the border in the Czech Republic.
Cinovec hosts one of the world’s largest hard rock lithium deposits and contains a JORC-compliant mineral resource of 657 million tonnes grading 0.4% lithium oxide, with accessory tin and tungsten credits.
The Zinnwald deposit has a mineral resource of 36.4 million tonnes grading 0.64% lithium oxide.
Early activity by Lithium Australia has already been positive with the maiden drill program returning intersections up to 78.51 metres grading 0.51% lithium oxide from 78.49m and 68.76m @ 0.51% lithium oxide from 211.49m down-hole in the same hole.
Another strong result was 78.09m @ 0.48% lithium oxide from 31.07m down-hole.
Importantly, several individual sample assays exceeded a grade of 0.646% lithium oxide, which was the upper limit of detection from the historical data.
Lithium Australia said this bodes well for future upgrades in the lithium grade for new mineral resources versus historical estimates.
The company plans to complete a scoping study in October 2018.
Sadisdorf’s lithium mineralisation is present as a “mica” mineral known as “zinnwaldite”, which is a common alteration mineral in the halo surrounding the historical tin mines in this region of Europe.
Lithium Australia’s breakthrough SiLeach processing technology, which extracts lithium without the need for expensive, energy hungry roasting, has already been used to successfully extract lithium from Sadisdorf mica concentrates.
The drilling also encountered significant intersections of tin and anomalous tungsten that could enhance the project’s overall economic viability.
Salisdorf is located close to the rapidly expanding European electric vehicle and battery industries, of which lithium is such a critical component.
Earlier this week, German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier flagged that the government would support the production of batteries for EVs and said that energy-intensive production of batteries might be exempt from some electricity charge.
By Matt Birney
