The latest assay results from Hawkstone Mining’s diamond drilling program at the flagship Big Sandy lithium clay project in Arizona, US, haven’t failed to disappoint, with further thick, high-grade intercepts being recorded.
The assay results include a new peak value of 4,380 parts per million, or “ppm”, lithium over one metre, which converts to an impressive 0.94% lithium oxide content, a grade on par with some global hard rock pegmatite-hosted deposits.
Management said the drilling campaign has now defined lithium-rich mineralisation in the Upper and Lower portions of the Northern Mineralised Zone at Big Sandy over at least 600m of strike.
Better results from the latest batch of drilling intersections include 47 metres grading 2,130 ppm lithium from 12m down-hole and 23.2m @ 2,141ppm lithium from 12.8m down-hole in separate drill holes.
Other impressive assay intersections included 22m @ 2,195ppm lithium from 14m down-hole and 20m @ 2,333ppm from 40m down-hole in the same drill hole.
The company has now completed 19 of the planned 37 drill hole program through the Northern Mineralised Zone at Big Sandy, which is designed to provide geological and geochemical data for the estimation of a maiden JORC-compliant resource at the emerging project.
Hawkstone Managing Director Paul Lloyd said: “These new results have extended the known lithium mineralisation up to 600 metres north, with drilling continuing to encounter wide areas of thick, shallow lithium mineralisation across simple, consistent geology that compares extremely favourably to other lithium clay projects in the USA.”
“With drilling results continuing to impress and the recent appointment of lithium industry specialist Dr David Deak, the company is building real momentum towards estimating its maiden JORC compliant resource.”
In late March, Hawkstone unveiled an Exploration Target for Big Sandy, saying the project could contain between 242.1 million tonnes and 417.6 million tonnes of mineralised clays grading from between 1,000 ppm to 2,000 ppm of lithium, to a depth of 90m from the surface.
The thickness of the lithium clay intersections and the regular, coherent grade of mineralisation drilled to date at Big Sandy, provide confidence that this target could possibly be achieved by the company.
The current drill program is testing the continuity, lateral extent, grade and thickness of the mineralised zones and the results to date strongly support the company’s initial geological interpretation at the project.
Based on the assay results returned from the drilling program on the Northern Mineralised Zone in the last month or so, the company is well on its way to proving up a sizeable mineral resource for Big Sandy.
With recent metallurgical test work showing that simple acid leaching extracts 95% of the contained lithium from the Big Sandy ores over only 7 hours, it appears that Hawkstone is onto something pretty special in Arizona.
By Matt Birney
