Why strong drilling signs at Zigzag prime us perfectly for 2024…

As you may noticed, the recurring theme of my newsletters this year has been our eagerness to advance our four core projects to drill-ready status.
 
Truly, it’s a goal that’s defined First Class Metals since we listed in mid-2022.
 
So, it seems fitting that in this issue – less than a week before Christmas day – I can finally report that we have not only completed our first drilling programme at our Zigzag project… but that the initial visuals of the cores look very encouraging when it comes to enhancing our potential for making a mineral discovery.
 
The visible spodumene we’ve encountered very much puts us on the front foot as we head into the New Year. Now, let me explain why…
 
Hitting pegmatite 
To recap, Zigzag is a hard rock project we acquired earlier this year due to its strong prospectivity for lithium – a key battery metal.
 
The property is located in a proven lithium jurisdiction, surrounded by ample infrastructure and large deposits being worked by companies like Green Technology Metals.
 
Most importantly, it also includes a pegmatite.
 
Not sure what a pegmatite is? Don’t worry, that’s for the geologists.
 
All we need to know is that it is a type of rock formation that can contain economic quantities of valuable minerals hosted within what is known as “spodumene”. And in this case, the valuable mineral of note in question is lithium.
 
You see, the pegmatite at Zigzag hosts the historic Tebishogeshik occurrence. This is a discontinuous structure covering 800m where previous explorers have identified high grades of lithium and tantalum within spodumene. However, it’s potential has never been fully explored.
 
That’s what we’re changing.
 
Following preparatory stripping and sampling, we launched into a nine-hole drill programme designed to target the pegmatite at Zigzag last month.
 
Fast forward to this week, and we were able to report not just that the drill programme had completed within budget and time schedules, but also that visual analysis so far suggests it is well on track to achieving its goals.
 
There are two points here that are particularly encouraging.
 
First-of-all, as already mentioned, all nine holes intersected spodumene-bearing pegmatite.
 
In fact, we’ve now recorded more than 50m of pegmatite intersections covering multiple mineralised zones across 400m of Zigzag’s known 800m of strike. This already grants us a wealth of target areas for follow-up when it comes to our next phase of lithium exploration.

Pegmatite hosting spodumene in our drilling core

But second, it’s also important to note that the nature of the spodumene intersections means the system appears to remain open along strike and down dip. In other words ­– we know it’s big, but we don’t yet know how big. Again, this is something else we can follow up during our next round of work. 

Hitting the ground running 
The next step from here is to actually quantify the grades of lithium in the spodumene we’ve encountered in our holes. This will be key to prioritising our next targets and improving our understanding of the true potential scale of the pegmatite along with the lithium it contains.
 
Again, this is for the guys on the ground and in the lab.
 
But in simple terms, we’re in the process of logging the core so we can map out exactly where it came from in the ground. Following that, we will cut it into sections so we can get a much better idea of the scale and structure of the spodumene it contains. And finally, we will send around 100 of these samples off for analysis in the lab where their lithium grades will be recorded and returned to us in Q1 2024.
 
This is a sequence of events we’re extremely excited about completing and reporting to the market. Physical evidence of mineralisation, after all, is of the highest value when it comes to delineating a project’s discovery potential and commerciality.
 
It means we enter the New Year primed and ready to push forward at Zigzag potential now all the preparatory work has been done.
 
Add in the fact we also have drill-ready sites at Sunbeam, Esa, and North Hemlo and are progressing nicely across our non-core assets…
 
And 2024 looks to be shaping up very nicely before it has even begun.
 
In the meantime, I hope you all have a fantastic festive break. It’s a pleasure sharing my thoughts with you throughout the year, and I look forward to continuing to do so as we move forward.