JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Shares in Aim-listed Savannah Resources jumped 15% on Wednesday as the company announced its second mineral resource upgrade in as many months for the Mina do Barroso lithium project, with the project now estimated to contain 149 300 t of lithium oxide (Li2O).
The project, in northern Portugal, has an overall mineral resource of 14-million tonnes at 11% Li2O, which is a 52% increase on the February resource estimate.
The resource is defined from three deposits and the expansion marks an 87% increase in the total mineral resource estimate at Grandao to 10.3-million tonnes at 1.1% Li₂O, containing 111 600 t of Li₂O. About 70% of the Grandao deposit is now reported at the higher confidence indicated classification.
CEO David Archer said that Savannah believed it had established the largest spodumene lithium mineral resource in Western Europe.
"Mina do Barroso is shaping up as a major new European mineral discovery. With the strong growth prospects for lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and for electricity storage from the grid this is a critical time to be bringing a project of Mina do Barroso's scale, grade and location, on stream. We believe that Mina do Barroso has the potential to be a key piece of Europe's emerging lithium value chain that could help support the shift by European car manufacturers to the production of electric vehicles," he said in a news release.
Archer added that Mina do Barroso could be the first European supplier of spodumene and that the company’s focus was now on establishing the project’s economics.
The results of a scoping study would be published this quarter.
Shares in the company traded at 6.49p each by 10:00 GMT, up from the previous day's closing price of 5.6p a share.