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Red Dirt Metals (ASX:RDT) ramps up drilling at Mt Ida

ASX News, Mining
ASX:RDT
16 December 2021 09:54 (AEST)

Outcropping pegmatite. Source: Red Dirt Metals

Red Dirt Metals (RDT) has ramped up drilling at its Mt Ida lithium-copper-gold project in Western Australia, with two rigs on site and a third on the way.

To date, the company has completed 8900 metres of reverse circulation drilling and with a second rig now on site, drilling production is in excess of 350 metres per day.

Drilling is being undertaken to understand the potential scale of the Mt Ida system. By increasing drilling capacity, Red Dirt said it can move focus to five high priority regional targets outside of the central Mt Ida area.

These five targets were identified through rock chip sampling and mapping within a corridor extending four kilometres to the north-west of the central project area.

Two of these areas have been tested, both intersected wide pegmatite dykes up to 11 metres in thickness.

Additionally, two separate pegmatite intrusives were intersected in one hole which returned seven metres of high spodumene content from visual estimates within fresh pegmatite at 52 metres downhole, which the company said shows “excellent” near surface resource potential.

Moving forward, Red Dirt intends to ramp up its exploration footprint rapidly in the new year in addition to the continued drill-out and delineation of the existing pegmatite intrusives.

A third rig is set to mobilise to site this week — a diamond drill rig that will target the down dip extension of the thick pegmatite body to the south of the Timoni shaft.

The company’s initial focus is to systematically drill out deeper sections of both the defined pegmatites in the south and produce metallurgical samples towards preliminary metallurgical test work.

In the first quarter of the new year, Red Dirt plans to start work on a maiden lithium resource, which it expects to complete by the second half of 2022.

Shares in Red Dirt Metals are up 1.67 per cent to $0.61 as of 2:12 pm AEDT.

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