Sustainable and green development of high quality lithium

Charles Fitzroy, CEO of Bradda Head Lithium Limiteddescribes in detail its history and explains why and how it is now focusing on the development of high quality lithium.

Based in Arizona, Bradda Head Lithium Limited’s lithium research group focuses on developing high-quality lithium assets in North America. The company’s vision is to create value for shareholders through the acquisition and development of world-class lithium deposits and resources.

As a structure, the subsidiaries of the Bradda Head Lithium Group have a 100% stake in lithium brine, pegmatite and clay projects located strategically in world-class lithium belts in the United States. Some of his key mining projects include brine in Nevada and sediment and pegmatite assets in Arizona.

Beard Head owns 100% of its direct stakes in Zenolith LLC, which holds stakes in the Basin, Wikieup, Wilson Salt Flat, San Domingo and Eureka projects.

Bradda Head is led by a comprehensive team of directors and senior executives located around the world, with a wide range of expertise in areas from geology to economics. The company believes that the extensive collective experience of its leadership team, combined with the valuable advice of expert consultants in the evaluation and operation of high-quality lithium projects, will enable Bradda Head to achieve its strategic goal.

To see the company’s history and current goals in more detail, The innovation platform spoke with Charles Fitzroy, CEO of Bradda Head Lithium Limited.

What’s the story behind Bradda Head Lithium?

Bradda Head Lithium was originally established as Copper Development Corporation, which was founded in 2009. Copper Development Corporation was scheduled to explore, develop and process various minerals and oil, and was included in the list. on the AIM Stock Exchange in 2010

Copper Development Corporation got rid of its remaining mining interests in 2015 and announced that it was rebranding itself to Life Science Developments Ltd., focusing on investing and acquiring biotechnology and life science companies. The company was removed from the AIM stock exchange in 2017.

In January 2018, Bradda Head Limited, which at this stage was a wholly owned subsidiary, entered into a share purchase agreement and rebranded itself to Bradda Head Holdings Limited. The company terminated its joint venture with Zenith Minerals Ltd. in February 2021 and maintained control over all high-quality lithium projects in the company’s portfolio.

The company was listed on the AIM stock exchange in July 2021 as Bradda Head Holdings Limited, where it raised £ 6.2 million with an IPO. The company changed its name to Bradda Head Lithium Limited in September 2021 and ended royalty financing at the end of 2021, ending the year with $ 9.9 million in its coffers.

Why did Brad Bead choose to focus specifically on lithium?

In 2017, Bradda Head signed a joint venture (JV) with Zenith Minerals to gain up to 55% of its lithium assets. The board had a vision in 2017 to focus on high quality lithium. In early 2021, the agreement was revised and Brad paid Zenith $ 250,000 for 100% of the assets, and Zenith will hold 15% in the IPO.

How is the company developing and what are your current key goals?

The company’s significant growth is reflected in the rise in share prices of 5.5 pence (market capitalization £ 16 million) in July 2021 to a share price of 16.5 pence (£ 52 million market capitalization) as of 10 March 2022

The main goals of the company include:

• Expanding the resources in our clay assets;
• Development of a route for processing clay assets and advancing early technical research (PEA or Scoping); and
• Find out more about our pegmatite and brine assets through drilling and metallurgical tests.

Bradda Head has various catalysts for materials planned for 2022. Two of its key focuses are the start of drilling in the pegmatite area of ​​San Domingo in June this year, where there is a collection of 9 km long claims that have been mined before. from the surface in 1940. 50s for lithium. Beard believes that this area has a pegmatite area similar in style to the Kathleen Valley of Liontown Resources in Australia. The company is also focusing on its brine, Wilson and Eureka projects in Nevada, which could potentially also be clay deposits. Wilson and Eureka have lithium mineralization in clay on the surface at different levels (Wilson up to 182ppm Li and Eureka 550ppm Li). However, so far there has been only very limited surface sampling. Now we need to try to find out more. We got permission to test the brine in Wilson and we also got permission to drill the clay in Eureka. Drilling there began in April this year, with results to follow in the third quarter.

The first quarter of the year saw the geophysical results of the Eureka project and the renewal of the Basin East project resources through a 10-hole diamond drilling program, where we increased our ground resources by 65% ​​to 305kt lithium carbonate (LCE) equivalent, identified near the surface a high quality 1300ppm Li area, covering about 20% of the resource, and outlined a goal to study up to 6Mt LCE in the pool project.

In the second quarter of the year we will see the results of our initial training program in the Wikieup project. A 30-hole drilling program is planned and, depending on the results of the drilling program, additional metallurgical tests may follow.

The second quarter of 2022 will also include the launch of a 30-hole exploratory drilling campaign in the San Domingo project. It is also planned to direct drilling nozzles with the application of 3D modeling and subsequent drilling and metallurgical sampling.

The company plans to end the year, pending approval, with a study of its Basin North, Basin East Extension and Wikieup South projects. A subsequent 14-hole program has already been approved in Basin East, which will be combined with Basin North. The Basin East extension will form a larger resource that will join the existing resource in Basin East by Q4 2022 / Q1 2023.

The Eureka and Wilson H2 projects are also planned to go through exploratory drilling at the end of the year.

Bradda Head Lithium sees great potential for raising the price of its shares in the future and believes that once its resources are proven through planned drilling campaigns, it will experience a large increase in value.

Do you have any plans to expand your assets in North America?

Beard has three types of lithium assets in the United States: clay in Arizona, pegmatite in Arizona and brine in Nevada. The company has a unique mix of the three types of lithium deposits and we are not aware of another junior that has all three. Only one of these assets would be the founder of a company, so as a company we do not currently plan to expand further, but we always keep an eye out for opportunities.

Bradda Head Lithium Limited works with local stakeholders to develop its projects, ensuring that the local community is aware of and committed to the development of Bradda. The goal is to develop all three types of assets to ensure low operating costs, low carbon footprint and to be key producers of high quality lithium end products for the US domestic market.

To help achieve this, we are well funded by our IPO 2021, the funding we received from our deal with Lithium Royalty Corporation, and the recent $ 12.9 million placement we made in April, attracting institutional investors from North America, and we added to our investor from the UK base. The royalties were signed in December 2021 for $ 8 million in three payments and they also participated in a private placement worth $ 2.5 million at the same time.

How do you intend to keep your processes as environmentally friendly as possible?

We strive to achieve green practices by ensuring that we give priority to low-carbon processes in the design of processing and extraction routes. We also plan to work with local communities on other green initiatives, and progress is expected later this year.

What are the main challenges you face in your mission to supply low-carbon lithium to the United States?

Bradda Head Lithium believes the United States lacks a critical domestic supply of raw materials for the low-carbon battery industry. Most of the world’s high-quality lithium originates in Australia and South America before being processed in China and then distributed around the world. Bradda Head aims to develop its low-carbon lithium projects based close to its end users. The company believes it is strategically located to create a supply chain in the United States and meet the needs of the lithium market in the United States.

The development of the US supply chain relies on all developed connections. To start this process, raw materials are required and this is where Bradda Head comes from. Manufacturers of batteries and retouching equipment are emerging in the United States to take Bradda Head’s lithium carbonate or hydroxide from their clay assets and spodumene concentrate from their pegmatite assets.

What are your main goals for 2022 and beyond?

Thanks to $ 12.9 million in funding in April, we are in a good position to accelerate our assets. In the near future, we will focus primarily on expanding the resources in our clay assets in Arizona, namely Basin East, Basin North and Basin East. We have applied for permits for these claims and plan to drill them sequentially, once resolved, through Q2 / Q3 / Q4, which will be built into a larger resource that we plan to launch in Q4 2022 / Q1 2023.

We are pleased to announce an updated assessment of mineral resources in our Basin East project in Arizona, which has led to a 65% increase in tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent. Recent exploratory drilling and logging has also identified a high quality zone in the 58kt resource at about 1300 ppm Li. This is significantly useful in identifying and locating the next round of drilling targets.

In June, we began drilling our pegmatites to help us better understand them and potentially confirm our thesis that they are geologically similar to other areas of pegmatite systems.

This year we will also see shallow drilling in our Eureka project in Nevada to test the potential that this is a clay asset, as well as a brine project.

Please note that this article will also appear in the tenth edition of ours quarterly publication.