Yesterday, the company reported a further 62 drill holes from Corvette, with 27 left to be reported from the winter drilling program.
The latest results extended the high-grade Nova zone by 250m to the west, taking the total strike to 1.1km, while the CV5 pegmatite now extends over 3.7km, up from 2.2km a year ago.
"In many cases, you'd be happy with just the 1.1km," Patriot CEO Blair Way told the Resources Rising Stars conference on the Gold Coast yesterday.
Yesterday's drilling results included a standout 8.1m at 5.01% lithium oxide.
"The grades are fantastic," Way said.
The last hole of the program returned the longest pegmatite of the winter drill program at 139m, with assays still pending.
Patriot had been expected to put out the initial resource for CV5 by the end of June, but Way said the company had made the decision to delay it slightly to incorporate the results from the 30,000m winter program.
Way said the company was aiming for mid-July, though it could end up coming out just before Diggers & Dealers.
"Stay tuned for that," he said.
"We think it's worth the wait to feed that 30,000m of drilling in.
"We think people will be pretty happy with [the resource]."
Euroz Hartleys analyst Michael Scantlebury has forecast an initial resource of more than 120 million tonnes at more than 1.2% lithium oxide.
"This would make it the largest spodumene deposit in North America," he said.
Baseline studies are already underway as part of the permitting process.
The company will need to partially drain a lake to access CV5 but Way said other mining companies had been granted approval for similar projects recently.
"There is a pathway to permitting," he said.
Patriot believes it will complete the permitting process by 2025.
It is targeting construction in 2027 and commissioning in 2028.
Euroz is assuming capital costs of US$550 million for a 4 million tonne per annum dense media concentrator to produce 535,000 tonnes per annum of spodumene concentrate, expanding to 800,000tpa in 2033.
"We think we have something pretty special here," Way said.
Patriot has a market capitalisation of C$1.3 billion. About 30% of its stock is traded in Australia.
It last traded at A$1.835 in Australia. Euroz has a price target of $2.50.
