Aim-listed minerals exploration company IronRidge Resources’ wholly-owned Ghana entity Green Metals Resources, has been granted an exploration licence for its Mankessim South project, in Ghana.
The licence provides IronRidge full ownership of a contiguous prospective lithium exploration licence adjacent to the company’s Ewoyaa project, which has a Joint Ore Reserves Committee-compliant maiden mineral resource estimate of 14.5-million tonnes at a grade of 1.31% lithium oxide.
The licence further consolidates and enhances the company’s broader Cape Coast lithium portfolio, providing prospective tenure within the immediate lithium pegmatite resource corridor.
Additional coarse-grained spodumene-bearing pegmatites have been observed in outcrop and abandoned quarry pit faces at the saltpond by-pass pegmatite. Spodumene crystals are coarse-grained and consistent with the Ewoyaa main resource area, with some crystals observed up to 80 cm long; indicating the potential for a simple, low capital intensity, gravity-only beneficiation process.
This is significant as the pegmatite is located about 960 m south of the current resource footprint, which remains open and represents a highly prospective pegmatite corridor within the immediate resource area.
Further, IronRidge has remobilised its field teams to the Mankessim office in preparation for the commencement of field exploration activities. A Covid-19 management plan has been implemented for the team on site, including daily temperature monitoring, physical distancing, frequent hand washing and reducing interaction with local communities.
Low-cost regional exploration programmes including reconnaissance mapping, sampling and grid auger drilling are planned to commence in early July, once rains start to subside. Auger drilling will focus within the immediate resource area and strike extensions into the Mankessim South licence to define surface extents of pegmatites under weathered and transported cover ahead of future drilling.
Long-lead environmental and social baseline studies and monitoring are ongoing, with dry season surveys under way to feed into the future scoping study design.
Additional enhancement metallurgical test work is under way on diamond drill core pegmatite samples from the Ewoyaa resource area. The work is designed to further enhance lithium recoveries and grade within the coarse and fine-grained P1 and P2 type pegmatites to feed into the future scoping study design.