Savannah reports significant new lithium mineralisation at Barroso
By Josh White
Date: Wednesday 22 Jan 2025
(Sharecast News) - Savannah Resources reported significant new lithium mineralisation at its Barroso Lithium Project in Portugal on Wednesday, reinforcing the project's potential as Europe's largest spodumene lithium deposit.
The AIM-traded firm said results from recent exploration efforts, including rock chip and channel sampling across the C-100 and Aldeia (Block B) mining licences, identified additional high-grade lithium-bearing pegmatites, highlighting new targets for follow-up exploration.
Exploration at the C-100 licence confirmed extensions to existing lithium mineralisation at the Carvalha da Baccora and Alto dos Cortiços areas, with rock chip samples returning grades of up to 1.75% lithium oxide at Carvalha da Baccora and 3.01% lithium oxide at Alto dos Cortiços.
In addition, newly-identified mineralised pegmatites at the western end of the licence further expanded the project's exploration potential.
On the Aldeia licence (Block B), reconnaissance sampling revealed multiple new lithium-bearing pegmatites beyond initial expectations.
Significant lithium grades were recorded from rock chip samples, including 2.11% lithium oxide and 1.32% lithium oxide, while channel sampling at Trench 1b returned intercepts of 14 metres at 1.01% lithium oxide.
Further high-grade results of four metres at 2.08% lithium oxide and four metres at 2.62% lithium oxide were obtained from Trench 2.
A LIDAR drone survey, conducted for the first time over the project area, had uncovered several historical tin mining zones previously obscured by vegetation.
Savannah said it planned to investigate the areas further, as historical mining activity suggested a potential correlation between spodumene and tin-bearing pegmatites at Grandão and Pinheiro.
The board said the findings underscored the potential to expand the company's existing JORC resource inventory of 28 million tonnes at 1.05% lithium oxide.
"The results from the surface exploration which our team undertook are truly exciting," said chief executive officer Emanuel Proença.
"All of these results come from targets which have received little or no significant exploration work to date and are separate to the project's five existing orebodies, all of which themselves have known extensions we are still to fully define.
"While there remains much work to do as a result of these initial high-grade chip and channel samples, the early conclusion is very clear: the Barroso Lithium Project remains highly prospective for further spodumene lithium resource delineation."
Proença said the company was "firmly focused" on the workstreams required for the definitive feasibility study and enablement of the project's startup.
"However, we can and will continue to develop these, and other, additional exploration targets at the same time.
"In this way, we can build a pipeline of opportunities to increase the project's existing resources and life of mine over time.
"Furthermore, as our experience on the C-100 licence has shown, the full extent of the mineralisation is easily underestimated from outcrops alone."
Emanuel Proença noted that at Grandão, outcropping pegmatite was found mainly at the top of the hill with no indications of subsurface continuity.
"Through subsequent drilling however, Grandão has now been delineated as the largest ore body at the project.
"It's great to be able to add significant further exploration upside to our already compelling European lithium development story."
At 1242 GMT, shares in Savannah Resources were down 2.02% at 4.26p.
Reporting by Josh White for Sharecast.com.
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