Tambourah Metals acquires Pilbara lithium portfolio from Minrex Resources

Tambourah Metals (ASX: TMB) has expanded its lithium portfolio in Western Australia’s Pilbara region with the purchase of 337 square kilometres of granted exploration licences from Minrex Resources (ASX: MRR).

Under the terms of the acquisition, Tambourah will assume 100% ownership of six projects across the Tambourah, Shaw River and Coondina tenements for a consideration of $50,000 cash plus the issue of $100,000 in fully-paid ordinary shares.

The issue price will be equal to the volume weighted average price over the last five trading days and the shares will be held on escrow for three months from issue.

Tambourah has completed site inspections on the new tenure and confirmed the presence of pegmatite swarms at all projects.

Several of the projects, including Tambourah North and Haystack Well, adjoin its current portfolio.

The divestment of the six tenements is expected to result in significant savings for Minrex including $350,000 in annual expenditure, rent and rates.

Scale and quality

Tambourah executive chairperson Rita Brooks said the company plans to accelerate the scale and quality of lithium exploration at the new projects.

“We now have a dominant land position in the Pilbara which hosts two Tier 1 operating lithium mines… our geologists in the field will include the new LCT pegmatite projects in the planning of our next drill programs,” she said.

Ms Brooks said the company had recently completed an electromagnetic survey and ground mapping at the Tambourah goldfield and is now onsite at Shaw River to confirm drill targets.

It will incorporate this work into a proposed reverse circulation drill program across the region.

Tambourah North assays

Previous exploration conducted by Minrex at Tambourah North confirmed the presence of lithium-tantalum mineralisation with rock chip assay results of 2.56% lithium oxide with 105 parts per million caesium, 80ppm tantalum, 40ppm niobium, 100ppm tin and 1293ppm rubidium; and 1.91% lithium oxide, 518ppm caesium, 370ppm tantalum, 150ppm niobium and 2542ppm rubidium.

Historic samples from the Shaw River project include up to 42.2% tin and 3.41 tantalum which Ms Brooks said could be evidence of a possible highly-fractionated LCT pegmatite system.

Anomalous rare earth element samples were also reported to contain grades of up to 1.42% yttrium.

Haystack Well pegmatites

At Haystack Well (which adjoins Tambourah’s Russian Jack project to the southwest), historic assays have indicated localised LCT pegmatites and extensive stacked pegmatite swarms over a 650 metre-wide area which contain tantalum, beryl, corundum and kunzite (lithium oxide).

There are also historic records of anomalies in soil samples grading up to 589ppm lithium within an area of 1.5 kilometres within the pegmatitic halo surrounding the granite.

The anomaly is believed to be open in all directions and located within the 10km “Goldilocks Zone” from the presumed granite source.