Savannah Resources Plc (LON:SAV) Chief Executive Officer David Archer caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss the Phase I Mapping and Drill Programme at Mina do Barroso in Portugal
Q1: The Savannah lithium project in Portugal, what are the key features that you see there?
A1: I think there are probably 5 major items that I think characterise the opportunity. The first thing is that the project is in Portugal, it’s a very favourable mining jurisdiction and both the national and regional government is very focussed on the lithium industry and the successful development. The second thing is that our project involves a grant of mining lease and that really provides us with a very good opportunity to take the project into production quickly and hopefully be one of the first lithium mines in Europe. We’ve got an excellent portfolio with exploration upside, it’s got spodumene which is the key lithium mineral and a great metallurgy and it’s all hard rock material at surface.
Q2: You’ve published some results today for the Barroso mine, what do these results mean?
A2: Well, they’re all on the Mina do Barroso mine for a start so these major pegmatites and they’ve all been proven to be characterised by the lithium mineral spodumene and we’ve provided a bit more colour around the potential surface extent of 3 of the deposits, Reservatorio, Grandao and the NOA deposit. Reservatorio looks really very interesting, about 600 metres in the strike up to about 85 metres in width and has the potential to be a series of stack that could aggregate into a very large resource. Importantly, all 3 of the areas have very good lithium grades of around 1.6% so lithium in the spodumene concentrate.
Q3: So, an exciting time for Savannah Resources! What are the next steps from here?
A3: This mapping has been very useful in terms of helping us define where we should be drilling, our next round of drill, which should start up in the week commencing 17th July. We’re planning an RC programme of between 3,000 and 5,000 metres and the results of that, when aggregated with older drilling data, should allow us to come out with the JORC resource and start proving a little definition around the size of the resource envelope. So, very exciting time and we’re looking forward to being able to release some outstanding results a bit later in the year.
