Future Battery Minerals (ASX: FBM) has significantly expanded its Goldfields portfolio with the submission of multiple tenement applications. The latest move sees the company seek approval for an exploration lease and two prospecting leases, totaling 45 square kilometers of strategically located land near its existing Coolgardie lithium collection.
Managing Director and CEO Nick Rathjen emphasized that these applications would further solidify the company’s footprint in the region and open up new opportunities in both lithium and gold exploration. “We are excited to rapidly assess the lithium and gold potential of these new tenements, aiming to identify high-priority targets for drill testing,” Rathjen stated.
The new tenement applications build on FBM’s previous efforts in August 2024, which included a comprehensive review of historical data and recent fieldwork. These efforts have yielded promising early-stage results, particularly at the Kal North tenement, which has shown significant gold discovery potential and warrants additional investigation.
Following a $4 million cash sale of its non-core Nevada lithium project, FBM is well-funded for upcoming exploration activities. Rathjen highlighted that the company is poised to advance its exploration across the world-class Goldfields over the next 18 to 24 months.
Strategic Gold Exploration and Diversification
While Future Battery Minerals remains focused on battery metals, its latest tenement applications are aimed at diversifying the company’s portfolio with high-grade gold opportunities. Gold’s current price of US$2750 per ounce, with analysts predicting further increases, adds to the appeal of this expansion.
The prospecting applications P15/6924 and P15/6925 cover a 2-square-kilometer area just east of Horizon Minerals’ Burbanks mine, which historically produced 466,000 ounces at 2.4 grams per tonne. Despite being only 2 kilometers from the mine’s underground development, prior drilling on this area has been sparse, with only non-targeted, wide-spaced aircore drilling conducted nearly 30 years ago. However, surface gold anomalies were discovered by Barra Resources in 2007, with previous drilling revealing low-order mineralized zones, such as 4 meters at 0.31 grams per tonne.
The new tenements’ proximity to FBM’s existing Miriam and Kangaroo Hills projects also suggests potential for lithium-caesium-tantalum pegmatites in the subsurface. A comprehensive magnetic geophysics review, slated for the first quarter of 2025, will further evaluate the gold potential of these areas.
FBM will also conduct surface mapping and sampling at exploration lease E15/2109, a large 43-square-kilometer area south of Kangaroo Hills, dubbed Nepean South. Gold exploration in the region has been limited, and FBM plans to focus on a 3.3-kilometer extension of the area’s greenstone unit, which lacks sufficient publicly available geochemical and drill data.
Navigating Market Volatility
While the lithium market has faced a significant downturn since mid-2023, with Australian spodumene prices plummeting from peak levels above US$8000 per tonne to around US$900 per tonne, the demand for lithium continues to grow. This presents significant long-term opportunities for companies like FBM that remain committed to exploration despite the market pullback.
FBM has maintained a steady focus on its Kangaroo Hills and Miriam lithium projects in Coolgardie, which are situated along a key interpreted lithium trend. The company’s ongoing investment in exploration, even during challenging market conditions, positions it for future success. With sufficient cash reserves, FBM is set to proceed with the first phase of exploration in 2025, including an initial ground check of its newly acquired prospects.
Additionally, preliminary results from the Kal North project have indicated strong gold discovery potential, further bolstering FBM’s diversified exploration approach. The company is also targeting promising pegmatite deposits at Miriam for drilling in the near term, demonstrating its continued confidence in the region’s resources.
As FBM continues to explore both lithium and gold opportunities, its strategic expansion in the Goldfields underscores the company’s commitment to maintaining a robust and diversified portfolio in the face of evolving market dynamics.
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