Africa-focused lithium exploration and development company Atlantic Lithium's Ghanaian subsidiary Green Metals Resources has been granted the Bewadze and Senya Beraku prospecting licences in the eastern portion of Atlantic's Cape Coast lithium portfolio, in Ghana, which also holds the company's flagship Ewoyaa project.
The award of the two prospecting licences provides Atlantic exclusive access to explore new, undrilled tenure, offering significant potential to further enhance the Ewoyaa project, for which the ASX- and Aim-listed company was awarded a mining lease in October.
"Since we initiated exploration activities in Ghana, we have always bookmarked Bewadze, in particular, to be highly prospective for lithium discovery.
"The licence sits along strike and within only 300 m of the historic Egyasimanku Hill occurrence where spodumene pegmatites have been observed. This, when considered alongside the radiometrics anomaly that runs into the licence, offers encouraging potential for mineralisation. With little modern exploration carried out across the licence to date, we are eager to get on the ground and commence an extensive work programme," comments Atlantic chairperson Neil Herbert.
He adds that no previous exploration has been completed at Senya Beraku, where north-east trending younger granitoids intrude gneisses and biotite schists in a similar orientation to the Egyasimanku Hill spodumene pegmatite occurrence, located within 20 km of the licence.
Further, both Bewadze and Senya Beraku also benefit from existing infrastructure, including operational high-voltage transmission lines and the adjacent N1 highway, providing direct access to the Ewoyaa project.
"Subject to the success of our exploration efforts, we hope that we will be able to incorporate the licences into the Ewoyaa project footprint to further enhance the economics of the project.
"We believe that the grant of the licences serves as the latest indication of the government's strong underlying support for the Ewoyaa project and for the company as its partner of choice in its ambitions of delivering long-term lithium production in Ghana. We have a number of licences still under application and hope that we see these granted in the near term, which will further assist us as we look to grow the current resource at Ewoyaa," he says.
A definitive feasibility study for Ewoyaa, which is being developed under a funding agreement with Piedmont Lithium, estimates the production of 3.6-million tonnes of spodumene concentrate over a 12-year mine life, making it one of the ten largest spodumene concentrate mines in the world.