- QMC Quantum Minerals has focused its pursuit of lithium on an historically developed, spodumene-bearing mine site in southeastern Manitoba
- QMC is building on pegmatite channel sample assay analyses, with plans toward identifying an NI 43-101-compliant resource that’s greater than those historically reported
- The company is working with SGS Canada to expand the historical resource estimate for the property and expects to double its current resource
QMC Quantum Minerals Corp. (OTC: QMCQF) (TSX.V: QMC) (FSE: 3LQ) has entered its first phase of diamond drill exploration on the spodumene-bearing Irgon pegmatite dike, which hosts a historical resource of 1.2 million tons grading 1.51 percent Li2O. The Irgon Dike is located in southeastern Manitoba within the Cat Lake-Winnipeg River pegmatite field, which hosts not only the adjacent, world class TANCO pegmatite but also numerous other spodumene and rare-element-bearing pegmatites. With the published historic resource to build on, the Irgon Dike is expected to yield significant quantities of saleable lithium.
Lithium remains an important lightweight metal that plays a key role in lithium-ion batteries that power the modern generation of computerized electronics — from small, wearable devices through larger electric vehicle batteries to the large electrical grid temporary energy storage units.
The company’s flagship project, the Irgon Lithium Mine Property, is located in a historically productive region, immediately north of the past-producing TANCO Mine. QMC aims to deliver a NI 43-101-compliant resource estimate on the site’s mineral potential this year that will supersede the historical resource estimate published for the Lithium Corporation of Canada (“LCOC”). LCOC undertook a 25-hole diamond drill program and underground development on the dike during the mid-1950s, the results of which were utilized to calculate that the Irgon Dike contained more than 1.2 million tons of lithium ore, grading 1.51 percent Li2O over a strike length of 365 meters (1,197.5 feet) and to a depth of 213 meters (698.8 feet). The dike remains open to depth and along strike.
QMC is in the initial stages of planning a phase two drill program, which will be designed to test the Irgon Dike to depth, below the current 231-meter level to which mineralization has been defined. By testing the Irgon mineralization below this level along the entire strike length of the dike, QMC expects to add additional tons to the resource estimate for the property.
In January, the company announced that an industry standard mobile metal ion (“MMI”) soil geochemical orientation survey would be undertaken, overseen by its consultants, SGS Canada. The results of this survey suggested the presence of two lithium soil geochemistry anomalies which potentially overlie mineralized locations at the Irgon Property. The MMI process allows companies to detect the presence of mobile elements (in this case, lithium) which occurs in the overlying soil. The source of these mobile ions is buried spodumene mineralization in bedrock-hosted, lithium-bearing pegmatites. On receiving successful results from the initial orientation survey, QMC cemented its confidence in the MMI technique, and the company plans to use the process at other prospective resource areas within the Irgon Lithium Mine project area.
QMC believes that these two geochemical anomalies that were identified by the MMI orientation survey, located immediately north and south of the Irgon Dike, are related to buried, parallel, lithium-bearing pegmatite occurrences that have neither surface rock outcroppings nor visible ground level spodumene mineralization (http://ibn.fm/wzKhN). Additional MMI sampling is expected to be undertaken to further define these targets, which will subsequently be drill tested during the phase two program.
QMC is also negotiating with SGS to process a large pegmatite sample obtained from the Irgon Dike to determine its lithium content. The study would have SGS prepare the pegmatite sample for a dense media separation (“DMS”) process. Magnetic minerals will then be removed, and a lithium concentrate will be made using DMS, after which the lithium concentrate will be converted to a potentially saleable product through flotation technology.
According to a new analysis by ResearchAndMarkets.com (“RAM”), the lithium-ion battery market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 16.2 percent between 2018 and 2024, landing at $92.2 billion in revenue (http://ibn.fm/POvCc). RAM further reported that the sales volume of new energy vehicles rose by 53.3 percent year-over-year during 2017 in China, the world’s largest emerging market for such vehicles (http://ibn.fm/R0yd2). All of these items point toward the rising potential of an industry for North America-based lithium producers.
For more information, visit the company’s website at www.QMCMinerals.com
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