Voltaic Strategic Resources (ASX: VSR) (OTCPK: VLSTF) shares are down 44% on the day. The VSR share price collapse is off the back of the drilling results from the Ti Tree project. The basic problem is that while it's the right sort of rock - pegamatites - and the right mineral - spodumene - there doesn't seem to be all that much lithium in there. And yes, this is entirely possible, right rock, right mineral but little of the actual target metal. This is why drilling campaigns have to be undertaken, why it's so important to wait for the lab assays. Because until someone actually digs a hole and checks we cannot know what is really down there.
There's a brave face being put on here by Voltaic: “Voltaic Strategic Resources Limited (ASX:VSR) has received the first batch of assays from the maiden drill program at the Andrada prospect, Ti Tree project where a combined 2.6km of strike was tested at shallow depths every ~300m across two prospective LCT trends. To date, 31 holes have been completed for 2,393m and 34 individual pegmatite intercepts encountered. Regional wide-spaced pXRF soil sampling campaigns now underway to identify new drill targets at ‘priority 1' Morpheus & Akira prospects which are interpreted to reside in the ‘Goldilocks1' zone, focusing on highly prospective meta-sedimentary schists with anomalous lithium and abundant tourmaline alteration.” As we continually repeat there's an art to reading corporate announcements. Roughly translated the above means “We've not found much so we're going to drill some more holes”. Which isn't quite what all wanted to hear - the preference would be for the announcement to shout that we've found lots, of course.
The actual assay results:
Voltaic assay results from Voltaic.
Those lithium contents are 0.04%, 0.03% and so on. We usually think that spodumene is mineable for lithium at 1.2% and so on and above. So the results here are not quite what everyone was looking for. Now it's true, these are very preliminary results, there's more work to be done mapping out the deposit and so on. But these results have blown some of the froth off the top of the VSR share price.
Voltaire Strategic Resources share price from ASX
Such things happen in mining exploration - as we say, someone does have to dig a hole to really find out what is there. But these are, by the standards of the specific sector here, lithium bearing spodumenes, not exciting. To be very kind about it that is, not exciting is indeed kind way of putting it. It is possible that further mapping of the deposit will find greater lithium concentrations but so far it's difficult to see that this project will progress to exploitation.
