- QMC Quantum Minerals is preparing for Phase 2 exploration on its spodumene-bearing Irgon Mine Project
- QMC is nearing completion of NI 43-101 resource estimate to update published historic resource estimate
- Company expects to improve on the historic estimate of more than 1.2 million tons of lithium
QMC Quantum Minerals Corp. (OTC: QMCQF) (TSX.V: QMC) (FSE: 3LQ) is exploring a historically productive region in hopes that the ore it may yield will be adequate to help drive an industry that has found new life amid the computer and internet breakthroughs of the 21st Century. The region, which is in Southern Manitoba’s rare-element pegmatite mining district located 500 kilometers (310 miles) northwest of Lake Superior, has been established as a potential source of commercial-grade lithium resources with the capacity to energize North America’s computerized products.
QMC’s Irgon Mine Property in southeastern Manitoba has a half-century-old historical resource estimate of 1.2 million tons of lithium oxide grading 1.51 percent measured over a strike length of 365 meters and to a depth of 213 meters. The company expects to produce a current NI 43-101-compatible resource estimate during the coming months that could potentially double the strike length by extending it as far as 400 meters to the west. QMC will also define spodumene mineralization to depth below 213 meters, the current maximum depth explored by the historic drilling.
North American hard rock miners reigned over the lithium supply in the pre-Internet of Things era leading into the 1980s, turning the mineral spodumene into a virtual lithium lodestone that supplied the soft metal for medicinal anti-psychotic purposes, ceramics and lubricants. Just as computer batteries have surpassed those uses in the past couple of decades, a revving drive for electric vehicles, more eco-friendly than their petroleum-fueled counterparts, is building a new benchmark for demand and a revival of the rock mining industry that was forced to yield ground to the new, cheaper saltwater evaporation extraction methods of the late 20th century.
Companies such as QMC are invested in the premise that hard rock mining for lithium is ultimately more reliable than brine evaporation pond extraction. The demand for lithium will continue to increase as electric vehicles and portable Internet of Things electronics become more of a standard part of everyday living. In 2018, sales of electric vehicles surged ahead of those in 2017, rising about 70 percent. Likewise, rising demand for lithium hydroxide, a key element in lithium-ion batteries, was largely satiated from new hard rock mineral extraction in Australia (http://ibn.fm/vYJ7Z).
Manitoba’s long economic dependence on mining and the slow market conditions have created ample personnel resources as well, as shown most recently by the imperilment of 800 jobs in the northern Flin Flon district when a zinc refining company announced that it will close its operation (http://ibn.fm/mtoOA). Flin Flon is a town with a population of 5,000 that is also the base for QMC’s second mining focus, the Rocky-Namew Property, a prospective volcanic massive sulphide project located within a very prolific greenstone belt.
After exploring the Irgon Site to identify possible extensions to the known dike and locating additional mineralized lithium-bearing pegmatite dikes within the company’s property, the company began working to expose the dike completely along the strike length. Subsequently, it launched a program of channel sampling to confirm and extend the zone of known spodumene (lithium) mineralization. During the coming year, QMC intends to undertake a Phase 2 diamond drilling program while preparing the NI 43-101 report and any additional updates to it.
The company is particularly interested in significant spodumene mineralization in pegmatite dikes immediately west of the Irgon Dike and intends to begin exploration to see if the pegmatite comprises the western extension of the Irgon Dike or if it is an entirely new mineralized pegmatite system.
“Either way, as this new mineralized zone is being evaluated, it could quickly add potential resource expansion within the Irgon Project,” the company stated in its year-end MD&A report (http://ibn.fm/Husxv).
For more information, visit the company’s website at www.QMCMinerals.com
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