A Nipigon-area lithium explorer has produced its first resource estimate on a property that shows open-pit mining potential.
Vancouver’s Imagine Lithium released an 8.4-million tonne lithium oxide resource for its Jackpot Project, 40 kilometres north of the town of Nipigon and 150 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay.
The 18,800-acre property containing lithium-bearing pegmatite rock is accessible by road, east off of Highway 11.
The company has been probing around two historic resources of untapped lithium oxide that needed to be verified and updated. They envision mining the resource from two pits, named Jackpot and Casino Royale.
Jackpot contains 3.1 million tonnes, grading 0.85 per cent lithium oxide on the indicated side and 2.2 million tonnes, grading 0.82 per cent in the inferred category. Casino Royale holds 3.1 million tonnes inferred at 1.0 per cent.
With more drilling, the company said there’s room to grow the resource.
Metallurgical testing shows a lithium oxide recovery rate of up to 81.5 per cent, which the company said supports the viability of the project.
In a Sept. 3 news release, Imagine Lithum president J.C. St-Amour views this estimate as an “excellent starting point” to build up more resources in the near future.
“There are several areas of the deposit which remain open as well as new pegmatite targets which are untested,” he said in a statement. “The unexplored potential on the property gives us momentum to find and build additional lithium mineral resources.”
The company points out that they are in a growing lithium region of northwestern Ontario.
Their neighbour, 15 kilometres to the north, is Rock Tech Lithium and its advanced stage Georgia Lake deposit.
Rock Tech is collaborating with a community and brownfield developer, BMI Group, in the town of Red Rock where they are hatching plans for a lithium refinery and a commercial port on Lake Superior.
Imagine and Rock Tech began talking last fall about finding ‘synergies’ to jointly bringing their projects into production.
With access to the highway, power connections and a nearby workforce, St-Amour pitched that their project has a major advantage over other, more remote, lithium deposits in the northwest.
Imagine said in the release that it’s keeping its options open in shipping material to “processing plants globally” and battery plants in southern Ontario or possible lithium refinery on the drawing board for Red Rock and Thunder Bay.
