Stockwatch Diamond & Specialty Minerals SummaryStockwatch Diamond & Specialty Minerals Summary for Dec. 29, 2023
2023-12-29 20:21 ET - Market Summary
by Will Purcell
Rick Walker and Garth Drever's Frontier Lithium Inc. (FL) lost one cent to 76 cents on 184,000 shares. The company has encouraging assays from new channel sampling at its Pennock pegmatite, 25 kilometres northwest of its PAK deposit and 22 kilometres northwest of Spark, its second noteworthy deposit in the far northwestern corner of Ontario. The headline trench averaged 1.76 per cent lithium oxide over its three-metre run, with modest amounts of other rare metals to add intrigue. A second of the three new trenches averaged 0.97 per cent along its 5.8-metre length, while a third delivered a lower grade over a narrow run. While encouraging, the new trenches fall short of one sampled five years ago. That test, dug into a blowout area of Pennock 700 metres west-northwest of the new hit, averaged 1.96 per cent lithium oxide over a 16-metre traverse, with a 12-metre portion grading 2.3 per cent. Mr. Drever, vice-president of exploration, cheered his "first opportunity to validate the spodumene-bearing Pennock dike beyond the blowout area" through continuous channelling across the dikes. The dikes, he beams, tend to be extensive and continuous, and they contain high grades of lithium oxide. While the dikes appear narrow at surface with widths less than six metres, and although more channel sampling and mapping are needed, Mr. Drever says that he and his crew are "excited about the potential discovery upside outside of the [company's] mining lease area." Frontier declared an updated resource for Spark early this year, listing 18.8 million tonnes indicated at 1.52 per cent lithium oxide and modest amounts of niobium, cesium, tantalum, rubidium and tin. Another 29.7 million tonnes are inferred at 1.34 per cent lithium oxide. At PAK, the company has nearly six million tonnes measured and indicated at 1.81 per cent lithium oxide and 680,000 tonnes inferred at 1.75 per cent. It is on to feasibility for PAK and perhaps Spark, but investors will be asking where the construction cash will be found. And so, Pennock offers a good news diversion.