St George Mining Limited (ASX: SGQ) has commenced an expanded drill at its flagship Mt Alexander Lithium Project in Western Australia’s Goldfields.
John Prineas, St George Mining’s Executive Chairman, said the company is undertaking the programme with confidence underpinned by the return of encouraging first assays from the maiden lithium drilling campaign carried out in 2022.
“I am pleased to report that the St George team is on the ground at Mt Alexander and has kicked off the 2023 drill programme, in line with our promise to shareholders,” Mr Prineas said.
“This expanded drill programme is built on the maiden campaign we undertook in late 2022 and which is now delivering the first batch of highly encouraging assays.
“Those initial results from the 2022 programme demonstrate that the lithium-mineralized pegmatite outcrops identified from rock chip sampling continue below surface with mineralization open at depth.
“This is an important exploration milestone for Mt Alexander and provides strong encouragement for the potential of systematic exploration of the extensive pegmatites at Mt Alexander to delineate significant lithium mineralization.
“We are excited to be ramping up our drill programme which is designed as a step-out and discovery campaign of drilling across our 15km-long pegmatite corridor.
“The backing of our strategic partners – leading lithium-ion battery companies Shanghai Jayson, SVOLT Energy and Sunwoda Electronic – means we also have the flexibility to add to the Mt Alexander drill programme with further RC and diamond holes as results warrant.
“Mt Alexander is an exciting lithium opportunity and just one of several highly prospective battery minerals projects in St George’s expanding pipeline.
“Investors can expect steady news flow over the coming months, with drilling updates and assay results from Mt Alexander to be released as available while we progress exploration activities at our other exciting projects across Western Australia.”
Further drilling will be designed to investigate if these pegmatites potentially merge at deeper levels or are otherwise associated with a larger pegmatite body down-dip.
A number of drill samples confirmed by assays to have anomalous lithium will undergo petrographic examination to confirm the nature of the lithium bearing minerals, which are visually interpreted to include spodumene and lepidolite.
Strong foundation to expand drilling
The maiden lithium drilling programme was aimed at confirming that high-grade mineralized pegmatite outcrops continue below surface and to gain a better understanding of the orientation of the pegmatites in order to plan future drill programmes.
The 2022 drilling delineated continuity of the lithium-bearing pegmatites below surface with most pegmatites open at depth. Deeper drilling of two pegmatites indicated continuity up to 220m vertical depth, highlighting the potential scale of the pegmatite system that has yet to be fully explored.
These results provide a strong platform to expand the lithium drilling across the pegmatite corridor at St George’s tenure.
This corridor is located adjacent and to the west of the Copperfield Granite, the interpreted source of the mineralised pegmatites at Mt Alexander as well as at Red Dirt Metals’ Mt Ida Project situated approximately 15km to the south of St George’s ground.
New and expanded Programmes of Work have now been approved that include more extensive areas of the prospective corridor for drilling.
For further information please visit: https://stgm.com.au/
