Pan Asia soil sampling broadens Thai pegmatite field

Recent soil sampling at Pan Asia Metals’ KT East lithium prospect in southern Thailand has stretched the site’s pegmatite field by 50 per cent to 2.1km by 1.5km.

The field, which sits within the company’s broader RK Lithium project, has also now been shown to feature a substantial Main Zone of about 2km in length and 500m in width, filled with lepidolite pegmatite sub-zones.

A picturesque view of the hills surrounding Pan Asia Metals’ RK lithium project in southern Thailand.

Management says the Main Zone is host to the most abundant number of lepidolite dykes, some of which are as wide as 20m and appear to frequently swarm from 1m to 10m in width. The pegmatites, which are stacked and dip mildly to the north-west, have given Pan Asia confidence that the target could favour an open-pit mine operation with a potentially low strip ratio – a crucial factor for cost-effective mining.

Exploration activities that included detailed soil and rock-chip sampling have also uncovered strong lithium markers, particularly in the western and north-western areas of the prospect. The sampling program extended to the site’s western tenement boundary and around old tailings and alluvial material, suggesting that the prospective trends may continue beneath the old workings.

‘The results from this follow-up soil program reinforce KT East’s potential to add substantial LCE tonnes to the RK Lithium Project.’

Pan Asia Metals managing director Paul Lock

An additional 329 samples were collected from the C horizon soils representing weathered rock, taking the total to 1076 taken from across the anomalous zone using east-west lines 100m apart, with 25m spacings.

The trial material was then tested with a portable x-ray fluorescence (pXRF) analyser. While it did not detect lithium, it was effective at identifying rubidium—a key lithium indicator previously detected at site with a 0.83 correlation—along with manganese, potassium and tin.

Although no further rock-chip samples were taken, previous assays from the area have returned numbers from 1.08 per cent up to as high as 3.08 per cent lithium oxide.

Pan Asia Metals managing director Paul Lock said: “The results from this follow-up soil program reinforce KT East’s potential to add substantial LCE tonnes to the RK Lithium Project. The overall geometry suggests the project will be amenable to open-pit mining with potentially very low strip ratios. This, in combination with the Project’s low-cost environment, should see a low-cost hard rock mining project.′

The company’s ongoing exploration has not only expanded the known extent of the pegmatite field, but also confirmed that KT East has a bigger footprint than the combined RK and BT lithium prospects, making it a drill-ready target.

Further sampling and mapping in areas where anomalism remains open is now planned and may be followed by a trenching program. Management will also test the areas where large-scale historic surface mining for tin has been undertaken.

Not satisfied to sit back on its heels as a single project company, Pan Asia ventured into the South American lithium brine sector earlier in the year by picking up an option for 1200 square kilometres of granted exploration licences called the Tama project in northern Chile’s Atacama Desert.

More recently, the company also put its foot on some promising ground in Chile’s Central Copper Belt by triggering an option to buy the Rosario copper project to explore for porphyry-style mineralisation. Sitting just 10km north of the State-owned El Salvador mine that hosts 800 million tonnes of ore grading 0.59 per cent copper for a total of 4.7 million tonnes of contained copper, the project is certainly in the right region to find an “elephant”.

Pan Asia has got a busy time ahead of it in the next few months as it not only pushes to build on the promising work done so far at its Thai lithium grounds, but it is also seeking to follow up on an induced-polarisation (IP) program that has just kicked off at Rosario to test its metallurgical amenability to heap leach processing.

That is likely to be enough to see shareholders keeping a close eye on the progress.

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