The company certainly believes there's the potential for some heavy hitters to start getting interested, given the size implications based on work to date and tenure held.

Galan's drilling of the high lithium grades and low impurities in the long productive Hombre Muerto Salar where the junior's Candelas project is located, underlie the optimism.

Galan's drilling has been finding the sought-after brine in an unconventional geological setting - perhaps best described as the large and extensive channel that's believed to account for nearly 80% of the incoming waters and lithium into the salar.

The drilling has evidently excited Galan's consultant SRK.

"Preliminary field measurements and laboratory analyses on brine suggests the Candelas project has the potential to become a world-class soluble lithium deposit hosted in a unique geological setting," SRK said in February.

According to Galan director Clive Jones, the funny thing about that comment was the very experienced SRK consultant had apparently been extremely sceptical of Galan's thesis before a sudden volte-face at Candelas during the initial drilling. 

At a recent briefing in Perth, Jones said he couldn't emphasise enough the advantage of projects with low impurities brine.

Specifically the low cost of processing such material.

"It shields you from the lithium price," Jones said.

"The higher the impurities, the higher the processing cost."

It's the quality of the brine that's seen as the rational for Korean giant POSCO paying Galaxy Resources a stunning US$280 million for part of the Sal de Vida project at Hombre Muerto.

It's a much different lithium market at the moment.

Still, Galan was capitalised this week at A$17 million.