- Sayona Mining (SYA) opens the trading week in the green after announcing a potential increase to the lithium resource at North American Lithium (NAL)
- Sayona says the latest resource estimate for the newly purchased project was completed in 2017 — before further drilling was done in 2019
- The company kicks off talks with consultant group BBA Inc to review the drilling work and update the mineral resource at NAL before the end of 2021
- In 2017, NAL had a total mineral resource estimate of 39.3 million tonnes at 1.04 per cent lithium oxide for 408,960 tonnes of contained lithium
- Shares in Sayona Mining are up 1.61 per cent and trading at 15.8 cents each at 11:17 am AEST
Sayona Mining (SYA) has opened the trading week in the green after announcing a potential major increase to the lithium resource at North American Lithium (NAL).
Sayona told investors this morning the potential resource increase came on the back of a review of drilling work completed at the Quebec-based project.
As such, the company said it had kicked off talks with consultant group BBA Inc to produce an updated resource base for the NAL before the end of the year.
This would form the basis of a scoping study for the production of spodumene concentrate from the project from 2023 onwards.
The NAL resource
Sayona and joint venture partner Piedmont Lithium (PLL) officially purchased NAL in late August through their joint venture entity, Sayona Québec
The company said in 2017 that NAL had a total mineral resource estimate of 39.3 million tonnes at 1.04 per cent lithium oxide for 408,960 tonnes of contained lithium.
However, further drilling was completed at NAL in 2019, including 42 holes drilled for some 12,000 metres. Sayona is now working to integrate the results from the 2019 drilling into the resource estimate for the Canadian project.
Managing Director Brett Lynch said based on the drilling completed at NAL since 2017, the company anticipated a “significant upgrade” to the NAL resource base.
“This only adds to the opportunity at NAL, which is the centre of our expanding Abitibi lithium hub supported by our Authier and Tansim Lithium Projects,” Mr Lynch said.
“Our Québec team is now on‐site at NAL and progressing the feasibility study to allow us to successfully resume operations.
“We look forward to quickly getting NAL back into production, becoming North America’s leading lithium operation and supporting its clean energy revolution.”
Sayona said contractor BBA would produce a resource base that adhered to Canada’s resource classification standards and then convert this resource to Australian JORC standards.
NAL covers a 592.31-hectare area in Québec’s Abitibi‐Témiscamingue region.
Sayona also owns the Authier and Tansim projects in Québec along with some lithium, gold and graphite assets in Western Australia.
Shares in Sayona Mining were up 1.61 per cent and trading at 15.8 cents each at 11:17 am AEST. The company has a $931 million market cap.