JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Australian lithium developer Pilbara Minerals has signed two agreements with ASX-listed Altura Mining, formalising a framework for ongoing cooperation in the development of their adjoining lithium/tantalum deposits.
This access agreement will assist Pilbara in its strategy to fast-track the development of its project, with a definitive feasibility study currently in its final stages and expected to be released in early September.
Altura’s deposit immediately adjoins Pilbara’s Pilgangoora lithium/tantalum project to the south-west, offering numerous opportunities to unlock logistical, operational and strategic synergies.
A joint access agreement provides for Pilbara and Altura to mutually remove any objections to tenure applications made by either company and for sharing of site access roads and pipeline locations, with the distribution of costs incurred proportionately.
The two miners have also executed a nonbinding memorandum of understanding to establish a framework to jointly evaluate the potential to expand or jointly exploit the lithium-rich pegmatite zones, which have now been established as crossing the tenement boundaries between the two projects.
The potential has been confirmed by resource/reserve drilling programmes, in conjunction with sterilisation drilling at planned infrastructure locations on both sides of the tenement boundaries.
The work has delineated a series of mineralised pegmatites, which cross the tenement boundaries and offer the potential to expand and/or further optimise the reserve inventories and mining schedules currently being developed independently.