ENERGY MINERALS

Positive signs for Red Dirt's new lithium project

Flanagan says company is excited by first drilling

 Core from Yinnetharra

Core from Yinnetharra

The company started drilling at Yinnetharra with one rig two weeks ago after acquiring the project in September in a deal worth up to A$25 million.

Executive chairman David Flanagan described the results as exciting and said the highlight was hole five, which showed significant pegmatite thickening at depth from 88.9m to 172.5m.

Assays are pending and aren't expected until early 2023. Another nine holes will be completed before Christmas.

The results confirm historical drilling which identified 15 lithium-caesium-tantalum pegmatites.

Mapping by the Red Dirt team has expanded the number of pegmatite dykes to 54 spread across 2.8km by 1.4km.

Flanagan told MNN the early results were particularly exciting given the extensive scale of the surface expression.

"To give you an idea of how good I think it is, and how good the board thinks it is, I get a bunch of performance rights, as directors often do, and the largest portion of mine will vest on delivery of a 100 million tonne resource at this project," he said.

"So if we were find 100 million tonnes, it would be equivalent to Liontown."

Red Dirt's other project is Mt Ida in the Eastern Goldfields, where the company recently defined an initial resource of 12.7Mt at 1.2% lithium oxide and 207 parts per million tantalum pentoxide.

Drilling results, metallurgical results, a scoping study and the lodgement of the mining approval are all expected in the March 2023 quarter.

"One of the most valuable assets we've got is a granted mining license that has an 80-year history of mining," Flanagan said.

The company is aiming to be mining by the end of next year and selling direct shipping ore from early 2024, after which it will build a concentrator.

When the company mines the lithium at Mt Ida, it will also pull out gold and potentially copper.

"It's almost like the Freo market on the weekend - there's something there for everyone," Flanagan said.

Red Dirt has had plenty of inbound interest and is engaged with three groups.

"All of them are building lithium hydroxide plants without offtake agreements," Flanagan said.

"Could you imagine - it'd be like building a steel mill with no iron ore coming in."

Flanagan said the Chinese in the lithium business behaved similarly to the Chinese in the steel business.

"And what I mean by that is, they are very flexible in the product that they will take. They'll be very flexible in the commercial arrangements, and they are quick," he said.

"And I would say that some of the European players are the opposite of that. I'd always say that the some of the European players are the most conservative and it's inconceivable to me how some of those European companies are going to still be competitive in the future if they're not reaching out to source material."

The company had $18.7 million in cash at the end of September and Flanagan estimated that figure is now $15-16 million.

"I can remember running a company that employed nearly 1000 people and we had a lot less money than that!" the former Atlas Iron boss said.

Flanagan recently recruited former Atlas colleagues Jeremy Sinclair as chief operating officer and Daniel Taylor as chief marketing officer.

"We're going to have a red hot crack," Flanagan said.

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