- Red Dirt Metals (RDT) shares surge on reports of high-grade lithium results from historic drilling and surface rock chips within the Mt Ida Project area
- RDT has identified thick drill hole intercepts and rock chips with high-grade lithium assays over a five-kilometre strike extent on the Copperfield Granite
- The company has secured a reverse circulation rig with an aggressive drill campaign planned in October
- Shares have soared 90.3 per cent to trade at 59 cents each at 3:37 pm AEST
Red Dirt Metals (RDT) shares have surged on reports of high-grade lithium results from historic drilling and surface rock chips within the Mt Ida Project area.
Lithium Review on Mt Ida dataset
While undertaking technical due diligence, RDT said its technical team had noted multiple high-grade lithium intervals intersected within pegmatite bodies on the western contact of the main granite intrusive known as the Copperfield Granite.
The company has so far identified 44 drill holes from a total of 4295 holes within the project’s dataset that have either been logged with pegmatite occurrences or incidentally assayed for lithium as part of a multi-element analysis.
Of this historical subset, 15 holes contain assays for lithium and tantalum, with significant results including 24 metres at 1.84 per cent lithium oxide and 350 parts per million (ppm) tantalum pentoxide from 160 metres.
Un-assayed core
Further, Red Dirt said one diamond hole, IDDD002, drilled in 2006 was shown to intersect 23.3 metres of spodumene-bearing pegmatite from 252.2 metres downhole and was located in the immediate hanging wall of the Baldock copper-gold lode.
The pegmatite core was never submitted for assay and, accordingly, RDT has since located the drill hole core, which will be cut and submitted for assay this week.
Notably, the company said the interval of the Baldock lode, targeted in IDDD002, assayed “very strongly” for both copper and gold, returning 3.67 metres at 2.88 per cent copper and 11.14 grams of gold per tonne and lying outside the project’s gold resource.
RDT has interpreted a preliminary target corridor extending for up to five kilometres in strike.
Red Dirt Metals CEO Matthew Boyes said the company was extremely pleased to have completed such a high-quality acquisition.
“The confirmation that we now have high-grade, high-quality lithium-bearing pegmatites drilled and mapped over considerable widths and strike turns Mt Ida into a company-making acquisition,” he said.
“The entire team is extremely excited and focusing its immediate efforts on unlocking what we see to be a significant opportunity in this new lithium province.”
Next steps
Looking ahead, RDT said a high-capacity reverse circulation (RC) rig had been secured for a first-pass exploration program at Mt Ida.
The company will hit the ground with a 25,000-metre RC program, delineated to gain a more complete understanding of the lithium potential at Mt Ida, while following up on existing high-priority gold-copper targets at the Baldock and Timoni mine areas and more regional targets at Kestral and Bombay.
It will also undertake initial mineralogical and metallurgical studies.
Meanwhile, a second RC rig is also being sourced, along with a diamond rig, to test deeper electromagnetic targets at the Baldock zone and extensions of mineralisation south and north of the central Mt Ida project area.
Mobilisation to site is anticipated in the second week of October.
Following the news, company shares soared 90.3 per cent to trade at 59 cents each at 3:37 pm AEST.