Aim-listed African Battery Metals (ABM), which has set its sights on becoming a significant explorer, developer and miner of battery minerals, has completed two auger programmes that collected soil samples at its 53 km2 Kisinka permit area, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
After bagging, collation and preparation, a number of the samples are being sent to an independent laboratory in Johannesburg for assay, the company said on Tuesday, which should be dispatched by June 15, subject to customs clearance.
The initial work on the licence, which is about 40 km east of the city of Lubumbashi, will be followed up by a licence-wide sampling programme, including geophysics and soil sampling to test for further anomalies in what is recognised as a highly prospective mineralised district, with seven producing cobalt/copper mines within 30 km of the licence.
Further to the agreement with the Congolese vendor of Kisinka, Jean-Pierre Ndobo Mwamby, ABM has initiated the second $50 000 tranche of its committed $100 000 payment to acquire 70% of the licence as per the original agreement.
On a wider scale, ABM has, in line with its strategy, continued to assess multiple opportunities within the battery metals arena.
Having a dedicated London-listed vehicle has attracted significant interests from project owners, the company said, as its team has been busy screening and further evaluating opportunities that it believes may fit ABM's investment criteria.
With this increased workflow, ABM’s geologists have been unable to visit the Sakania licence permit in the DRC.
Accordingly, it has agreed to defer, by six months, the $50 000 payment to Mwamby for the acquisition of that project.
“We continue to be extremely busy in building a portfolio of projects focussed on the battery metals arena. We will be submitting the first set of samples from Kisinka for independent analysis and are currently implementing further exploration initiatives across the licence to assist in quantifying its prospectivity,” said ABM CEO Roger Murphy.
Concurrently, he adds, the company has been evaluating multiple opportunities that it has generated itself and been approached on.
“We have a defined evaluation and investment process and hope to announce further updates on these in the near future,” he noted.