Boadicea Resources shares surge after adding lithium to its portfolio

Boadicea Resources Ltd (ASX:BOA) shares have surged more than 10% after adding lithium to its portfolio by completing an application for a new exploration licence in North Queensland.

Proactive Investors report the new project has a total licence area of 296 square kilometres and will be known as Hanns Gully Lithium Project.

Hanns Gully is only 11 kilometres southeast of the Croydon gold mining district, but BOA has identified it primarily as an exploration project for greisen-style lithium mineralisation.

The key focus of BOA’s lithium exploration in the region is the association of lithium with extensive high-grade tin mineralisation and previously identified greisen granite within the Esmeralda Granite that covers almost 100% of the area covered by the application.

BOA managing director Jon Reynolds said: “Boadicea has continued to demonstrate an ability to identify unpegged ground to acquire quality exploration projects at low cost.

“The Hanns Gully Lithium Project provides an excellent additional Queensland based project that strongly aligns the company with the metals of the future.

“Boadicea will continue to seek other quality lithium projects within Australia as part of our growth into metal exploration for the EV market.

“This further reinforces our commitment to our nickel and copper projects and positioning us as an explorer for high demand metals to meet the needs of a cleaner, greener future.”

Hanns Gully geology

BOA’s application is centred on historic tin workings known as the Stanhills tin field within the Esmeralda Granite.

Between 1900 and 1936, it is estimated that 260 tonnes of cassiterite concentrates were mined from numerous small but high-grade lodes.

Previous explorers reported that tin mineralisation is commonly associated with strong alteration of the granitic rocks.

These greisen zones are fine-grained and composed principally of quartz and muscovite in approximately equal quantities.

Features of greisen-style mineralisation

There are about 120 different lithium-bearing minerals.

The target of exploration at Hanns Gully is greisen igneous formation, which are hydrothermally altered rocks associated with granitic intrusions.

Greisens correspond to some parts of a granite intrusion transformed by hot hydrothermal fluids into an assemblage mainly composed of muscovite and quartz.

An example of a world-class greisen-style deposit is European Metals Holdings (AIM:EMH, ASX:EMH, OTC:EMHLF) Cinovec deposit in the Czech Republic which contains an indicated resource of 372.4 million tonnes of mineralized greisens grading 0.4% lithium.

Cinovec is the largest lithium resource in Europe and also the world’s fourth-largest non-brine deposit.

Electrification of global economies

Electrification of the global economies and the removal of fossil fuel as a source of energy is a key driver for the transition of the globe in its efforts to reduce CO2 emissions.

This requires a transition of the power generation, storage and use of power. The big five transition metals are copper, aluminium, nickel, cobalt and lithium.

Copper and aluminium are also critical to the expansion of transmission and distribution grids, as are solar panels.

Concurrently, the electric vehicles (EV) sector is rapidly growing and will see demand soar from 5 million EVs today to at least 25 million by 2030.

The batteries for EVs and the emerging energy storage market will drive up demand for lithium, nickel and cobalt.

Boadicea has aligned its exploration strategy with four of the key EV metals, namely, copper, nickel, cobalt and now lithium.

The BOA exploration metals are forecast to have the following demand growth until 2030;

• Copper: 5.5x
• Nickel: 5.2x
• Cobalt: 1.5x
• Lithium: 5.3x

Lithium-ion battery metal demand outlook (Source IGO Presentation, September 2021)

In line with the increased demand for lithium-ion batteries, world demand for lithium is forecast to increase from 305,000 tonnes lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) in 2020 to 486,000 tonnes in 2021.

Demand is then forecast to reach 724,000 tonnes by 2023.

A fundamental supply/demand imbalance is forecast from the early 2020s with an ever-increasing imbalance through to 2030.