Kristie Batten: Future Battery Minerals plans to flex its muscles in 2025

Cashed up and ready to roll further into a gold-hued 2025, Future Battery Minerals has put itself in a good position to pursue organic and inorganic growth.

Future Battery Minerals is targeting a golden 2025, writes Kristie Batten. Pic: Supplied/Stockhead

One of Australia’s top mining journalists, Kristie Batten writes for Stockhead every week in her regular column placing a watchful eye on the movers and shakers of the small cap resources scene.

Future Battery Minerals (ASX:FBM) has put itself in a good position to pursue organic and inorganic growth.

Even though the price of lithium languished, 2024 was an important year for the company.

FBM sold its Nepean nickel project in Western Australia and its Nevada lithium project to focus on its Coolgardie lithium and gold projects.

It also raised $6 million in a weak lithium market to acquire the Miriam lithium project near Coolgardie.

On the corporate front, former Fortescue CEO Nev Power stepped up into the role of chairman, while Rob Waugh, fresh from leading Musgrave Minerals to a takeover by Ramelius Resources, joined the board.

They join managing director Nick Rathjen, who was head of corporate development at Prospect Resources when it sold its Arcadia lithium project for US$378 million, and technical director Robin Cox, who has led the discovery of two lithium deposits.

The divestment of the non-core assets has allowed FBM to hone its focus on its Coolgardie gold and lithium projects.

At the Big Red lithium deposit within the Kangaroo Hills project, the company has hit results including 29m at 1.36% lithium oxide from 38m and 31m at 1.13% lithium oxide from 86m, including 20m at 1.43%, with the known strike of mineralisation extending over 900m.

Rathjen told Stockhead the discovery was promising, being near surface, open, potentially thick and near an existing operation, Mineral Resources and Ganfeng Lithium’s Mt Marion.

“We think we have that scale potential to potentially look at our own operation in the future,” he said.

“And all those things mean you've got a good project. You're just not coming into the right point of a cycle, so it doesn't mean you throw in the tools or drop what you're doing. It means you've just got to look at how you continue to progress the project, because the lithium market will turn. It's just a timing game.

“But what you want to make sure you do is you advance the asset during this time, when nobody's looking at lithium, so that's how we've done it, and we've done it on a really cost-effective basis.”

Gold potential

Being in Coolgardie near several big gold mines means that FBM’s ground also has gold potential, something it is planning to test in the coming quarters.

FBM has recently applied for a number of new tenements around its existing ground, expanding its tenure by 45 square kilometres.

Two of the new tenements are directly east of Horizon Minerals’ Burbanks mine.

“There's definitely gold potential there,” Rathjen said.

“And we were able to stake it for a couple of thousand dollars, so a low entry price to hopefully generate what value we can and see what's on that ground.

“We're doing all the groundwork ourselves and we've got a really good team to execute that strategy.”

The company is also planning to advance the underexplored Kal North tenement, 45km north of Kalgoorlie.

The hunt is on

One of FBM’s most important assets is its cash balance of $7.8 million.

“Obviously, cash is king in this market, and so for us, it's how do we expose our shareholders to the most amount of upside potential in the short term, while lithium may take a bit longer to turn around,” Rathjen said.

“So that's where we are looking at new opportunities in quite a big way to really see how to reward shareholders and hopefully find really attractive value opportunities for shareholders to get really good exposure to another commodity, such as gold.”

The main focus of FBM’s business development activities is finding a gold asset in WA.

“Like with our Kangaroo Hills and Miriam lithium project, anything that has that economic potential, but also something that's not super remote, and has ease of ease of ability to develop and also commercialise, and has more than one route to extract value,” Rathjen said.

“We do have a few really attractive opportunities that we're looking at that we're getting excited about and hopefully can progress over the course of this year.

“We think we've got the team, the board, the capital, and the expertise to really generate significant value from a WA asset, particularly a gold asset.”

At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While Future Battery Minerals is a Stockhead advertiser, it did not sponsor this article.

Originally published as Kristie Batten: Future Battery Minerals plans to flex its muscles in 2025