Advantage Lithium Corp. announced that the Company has completed its acquisition of an initial 50% interest, with a right increase its interest to a total of 75%, in the Cauchari Project and a 100% interest in five other lithium brine properties located in the northern provinces of Jujuy, Salta and Catamarca from Orocobre Limited – one of Argentina’s leading lithium producers. The closing of the acquisition follows the closing of a $20 million financing.
David Sidoo, President and CEO, of Advantage Lithium, commented, «Having closed this acquisition and the $20 million financing, we are in a position to aggressively advance the exploration and development of our advanced Cauchari project with our partner, Orocobre, with drilling expected to commence in April 2017. We will also begin exploring the other 100% owned exploration projects in the heart of Argentina’s lithium triangle as we seek to build a premier lithium exploration company in Argentina.»
News Highlights
Acquisition of six Orocobre lithium brine properties, including 50% (with option of 75%) of the Cauchari project.
Drilling to start at Cauchari in April 2017, focusing and expanding both laterally and at depth on area of the inferred resource estimate as well as drill testing the large exploration target defined with a quantity range of 0.25 to 5.6 mt of LCE (lithium carbonate equivalent) and 0.9 mt to 16 mt of potash and target grade range of 260 mg/L Li and 2550 mg/L K and 537 mg/L for Li and 5350 mg/l K for the lower and upper ranges.
Cauchari hosts an inferred resource containing an estimated 230 million cubic metres of brine at ~380 mg/l Li and 3,700 mg/l K. This is equivalent to 470,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate (~88,000 tonnes lithium metal) and 1.62 million tonnes of potash (KCl – equivalent to ~840,000 tonnes of potassium).
The project is adjacent to Lithium America’s and SQM’s Cauchari project – host to major resources in the proven, probable, measured and indicated categories. Lithium Americas recently proposed a combined equity and debt financing of USD $286M investment by Bangchak Petroleum Public Company Ltd. and GFL International Ltd. to put its project into production.
The same, highly-experienced drilling contractor that successfully drilled and proved up the Lithium America/SQM Cauchari project has been contracted by Advantage Lithium
