Salt Lake boosts Lake Way sulphate of potash resource

Salt Lake Potash (ASX: SO4) has boosted its high-grade sulphate of potash (SOP) resource for its Lake Way project in Western Australia’s northern goldfields.

After an extensive exploration program across the Salt Lake’s project, the resource has now increased to 72.83 million tonnes SOP (total porosity).

“It is extremely pleasing to present the Lake Way mineral resource estimate for the ‘whole of lake’ that confirms the significant size and very high-grade resource at Lake Way,” Salt Lake chief executive officer Tony Swiericzuk said.

“It reinforces our current review process to consider a larger scale scenario at Lake Way and we anticipate releasing the technical results of the larger scale scenario towards the end of the second quarter 2019.”

According to Salt Lake, the maiden resource estimate that was released in July 2018 was constrained to the area within Blackham Resources’ (ASX: BLK) boundary.

The new resource is based on exploration that encompassed the remaining areas of the project including the paleochannel that runs along the project’s eastern boundary.

Unlikely pairing

Gold producer Blackham and Salt Lake executed an agreement in March last year that gave Salt Lake the brine rights to Blackham’s tenements that lie to the northern end of the Lake Way paleochannel.

In return, Blackham now owns the gold rights to Salt Lake’s tenements.

The parties also agreed to share data and facilitate exploration and development at each other’s tenements as well as evaluate sharing existing infrastructure from Blackham’s Wiluna-Matilda gold operations.

Lake Way

Earlier this year, Salt Lake reported field evaporation trials at Lake Way had produced “substantial volumes” of potassium harvest salts – which validated the company’s proposed salt production process.

By the end of January, field evaporation trials had generated 2 tonnes of harvest salts from Lake Way.

Several weeks later, Salt Lake revealed it had received final approval from WA’s Department of Water and Environmental Regulation to begin construction and operation of the first phase of Lake Way evaporation ponds.

Salt Lake plans for the ponds to become Australia’s first commercial scale on-lake SOP evaporation pond operation.

Shares in Salt Lake had dipped less than 1% to $0.57 by early afternoon trade.