Millie’s Reward delivers high-grade lithium values for Bass Metals

Bass Metals (ASX: BSM) will soon launch a phase two diamond drilling program at its Millie’s West lithium prospect in central Madagascar following highly encouraging channel sampling results.

The mineral concentrates producer today announced that a sampling program at its 100% owned Millie’s Reward lithium project had returned a weighted average intersection of 3.72% lithium oxide over 31m at the Millie’s West prospect, with a maximum 1m result yielding 6.61% lithium oxide.

This phase one exploration program also included soil and rock chip sampling, detailed mapping of historical workings and geological observations across several prospects within the tenement package.

According to Bass Metals, rock chip samples from Millie’s West and four other prospects Ilapa, Tsarafara, Tsararano and Vietnam, yielded lithium oxide values up to 7.15%, 5.96%, 4.09%, 5.71% and 6.22%, respectively.

In addition, orientation soil samples at Millie’s West and Ilapa returned lithium values up to 787 parts per million over 55m and 66ppm over 15m, respectively.

The company said based on these highly encouraging preliminary results, a phase two 300-600m diamond drilling program is planned to commence at Millie’s West this month.

A soil geochemical sampling program has already begun including 418 samples at Millie’s West.

This program is aiming to identify lithium soil anomalies in order to define the total width and strike length of the prospect’s mineralisation footprint, with a view to expand drilling operations after the initial drilling results are delivered.

According to Bass Metals, these latest results provide the most compelling data to date to support the company’s aims to delineate a potential significant resource at the Millie’s Reward project.

“The team is exceptionally pleased at this glimpse into what Millie’s could ultimately be,” Bass Metals chief executive Tim McManus said.

“We have yet to see early results from any other lithium discovery that compare to the surface expression being encountered at Millie’s and the potential we see to take the project forward rapidly,” he added.

Bass Metals also 100% owns the Graphmada large flake graphite mine in Madagascar, where last month it announced the first sales of graphite concentrate. The recommissioned mine reached nameplate capacity (500 tonnes per month or 6000t per annum) a fortnight before.

“We are now looking forward to achieving our primary focus of positive cash flow from operations while expanding our resource inventory in both graphite and lithium,” McManus said.

He said this was being done in parallel with the company’s strategy of expanding production at Graphmada and developing downstream expandable graphite production and technologies.