Spitfire Resources will begin fieldwork at its recently acquired White Lion limestone project in Zambia early next month.
White Lion is located approximately 100km from the Zambian capital Lusaka and sits on a granted Large Scale Mining Licence which covers a total area of 245 square kilometres. The mining licence was granted in 2011, runs for 25 years, and is renewable subject to certain terms and conditions.
The large sampling program, which will comprise of up to 300 rock chip samples at a 500m x 500m spacing across 60 square kilometres of limestone exposure, has been designed to further refine the Company’s understanding on the distribution of limestone grade, the structural orientation of the limestone and the precise locations of complimentary blend materials such as iron and phylites.
The program has been designed after a desktop review of earlier research and sample results collected at White Lion by Chris Ainsworth Consulting and a follow-up site visit with CAC’s African industrial minerals specialist Robert Barnett.
The collection of the White Lion samples will be managed from site and in Lusaka where Spitfire has offices to support its field team. Samples will first be sent to Intertek’s Zambian laboratory in Chingola and then to Perth Western Australia for further processing. It is expected the total collection and processing program will take approximately eight weeks. Results from the upcoming sample program will give Spitfire precise data upon which to plan a drilling program. The deeper understanding of elemental oxides will also be helpful in establishing which potential end use products might be best created from mining at White Lion.
"With the recent overwhelming approval by shareholders to acquire the White Lion project Spitfire can now get started with the necessary fieldwork to take the asset up the value curve," Executive Chairman, James Hamilton, said. "The first phase of that process is a large sampling program. Detailed sampling will ensure that our follow up diamond drilling work is limited in its potential for waste and best targeted for maximum effect."