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- Latin Resources (ASX:LRS) grows its global lithium resource by 56 per cent
- The company’s Colina Deposit prospect received a 41 per cent increase
- Latin reports Colina is now one of the world’s largest undeveloped lithium plays
- A maiden inferred resource has also been clocked for Fog’s Block
- LRS shares are up nearly 10 per cent, trading at 18.5 cents at 12:58 pm AEDT
Latin Resources (ASX:LRS) has announced it now boasts one of the world’s largest undeveloped lithium prospects with a 41 per cent increase to its Colina Deposit MRE.
The company has also inked a maiden inferred resource for its Fog’s Block target.
All in all, Latin Resources has grown its global JORC by 56 per cent to 70.3 million tonnes of ore at an average grade of 1.27 per cent lithium.
Shareholders rewarded the news today, with shares up nearly nine per cent at lunchtime AEDT.
Resource breakdown
The Colina MRE has been upgraded to 63.5 million tonnes of ore at 1.3 per cent lithium, representing a 41 per cent increase.
Broken down, that’s 1.7 million tonnes at 1.5 per cent lithium in the measured category; 39.3 million tonnes at 1.4 per cent lithium in the indicated category, and then 22.5 million tonnes at 1.2 per cent lithium in the inferred category – the lowest confidence ranking.
Of Latin’s new global resource, only two per cent of it is measured – the highest confidence ranking.
2024 drill run
The resource upgrade comes ahead of the company’s DFS at Salinas. tipped for mid-2024. Today’s JORC upgrade will be part of that.
While that DFS comes together, fresh drilling will kick off in January of next year.
No less than 16 drill rigs are set to begin plugging away at both Colina and Fog’s, with the program having been expanded so far as drill planning goes.
Economic assessment expansion
So too does the DFS stand to be expanded.
An existing economic assessment for the project underpinned a phase one production start in 2026 and phase 3 kicking off in 2029.
The phase three plans are to be expanded and extended, and that will be reflected in the DFS.
“The increase in size of the JORC resource will have an extremely positive impact on our DFS economics as the resource increase allows us to evaluate building phase 3 of the project lifting output significantly,” LRS Managing Director Chris Gale said.
“The lithium market sentiment is low at the moment; however, no one can say Latin hasn’t delivered what it has promised over the last two years.”
LRS shares were up nearly 10 per cent, trading at 18.5 cents at 12:58 pm AEDT.
