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Charger Metals NL (ASX: CHR, ‘Charger’ or ‘the Company’) is pleased to announce it has entered into a binding farm-in agreement with Rio Tinto Exploration Pty Ltd (“RTX”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rio Tinto Limited (ASX:RIO) for its Lake Johnston Lithium Project in the Yilgarn of Western Australia (RTX Agreement).
- Charger has entered into a binding agreement with Lithium Australia Limited (ASX: LIT) to purchase their minority interest in the Lake Johnston Lithium Project for $2 million to increase Charger’s interest to 100% (LIT Agreement)1.
- Simultaneously, Rio Tinto Exploration Pty Ltd (“RTX”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rio Tinto Limited (ASX: RIO), has signed a binding farm-in agreement for the Lake Johnston Lithium Project (RTX Agreement)1:
- RTX to pay Charger $500,000 and invest $1.2 million in Charger prior to commencement of farm-in;
- RTX to spend minimum $3 million exploration expenditure over the first 12 months;
- RTX can earn 51% by sole funding $10 million in exploration expenditure and paying Charger minimum further cash payments of $1.5 million;
- RTX can earn 75% by sole funding $40 million in exploration expenditure or completing a Definitive Feasibility Study.
- The RTX deal reaffirms the prospectivity of the Lake Johnston Lithium Project and its potential to host a large-scale lithium deposit.
Charger is also pleased to announce it has simultaneously entered into a binding agreement with Lithium Australia Limited (ASX:LIT) to purchase their minority interest in the Lake Johnston Lithium Project moving the Company to a 100% beneficial ownership (LIT Agreement), subject to shareholder approval, other third party approvals and the RTX Agreement.
Charger’s Managing Director, Aidan Platel, commented:
“The Rio Tinto Exploration farm-in agreement is an excellent result for Charger and its shareholders and reaffirms our belief that the Lake Johnston Project has potential to host a large-scale lithium deposit. The planned significant investment by RTX will allow thorough systematic exploration over all of the project tenure, with initial exploration focused on fast-tracking the Medcalf Spodumene Prospect as well as progressing the Mt Day and Mt Gordon lithium prospects.”
Charger’s Chairman, Adrian Griffin, commented:
“The Rio Tinto Exploration farm-in agreement will see them potentially spending up to $42.5 million to earn up to a 75% interest in the Lake Johnston Project. The largely unexplored Lake Johnston Greenstone belt now hosts multiple spodumene discoveries and with the recent focus and increasing exploration activity could evolve into a prominent lithium province.”
Figure 1. Location of the Lake Johnston Lithium Project which was first successfully drilled for lithium in December 2022.
Figure 2. Selected RC drill intersections of spodumene-bearing pegmatites at the Medcalf Prospect.2
Figure 3. Soil sample results of the Mt Gordon tenement showing lithium anomalies. TG Metals Ltd’s soil anomalies at their Burmeister lithium discovery are shown for reference. 3
TG Metals has conducted infill and extensional soil sampling (400m x 50m spacing) over the area immediately east of their recent discovery of a spodumene rich pegmatite at Burmeister (TG6 ASX announcements of 30 October 2023 and 13 November 2023). The results have defined a new area of lithium-in-soils anomalism, identified as the Jaegermeister Prospect, which extends to Charger’s 100% owned Mt Gordon lithium prospect (see Figure 3).
About the Lake Johnston Lithium Project
The Lake Johnston Lithium Project is located 450km east of Perth, Western Australia. Lithium prospects occur within a 50km long corridor along the southern and western margin of the Lake Johnston granite batholith. Key target areas include the Medcalf Spodumene Prospect, the Mt Gordon Lithium Prospect and much of the Mount Day LCT pegmatite field, prospective for lithium and tantalum minerals.
The Lake Johnston Lithium Project is located approximately 70km east of the large Earl Grey (Mt Holland) Lithium Project which is under development by Covalent Lithium Pty Ltd (manager of a joint venture between subsidiaries of Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile S.A. and Wesfarmers Limited). Mt Holland is understood to be one of the largest hard-rock lithium projects in Australia with Ore Reserves for the Earl Grey Deposit estimated at 189 Mt at 1.5% Li2O.4
This article includes content from Charger Metals, licensed for the purpose of publishing on Investing News Australia. This article does not constitute financial product advice. It is your responsibility to perform proper due diligence before acting upon any information provided here. Please refer to our full disclaimer here.
CHR:AU
Pursuit Dispatchs 99.5% Lithium Carbonate Samples to Potential Strategic Partners as Feasibility Studies Progress
HIGHLIGHTS
- Final product assays confirm 99.5% lithium carbonate purity, upgraded from pilot output via bench scale processing.
- Certified samples dispatched to multiple potential offtake and strategic partners for qualification.
- Feasibility study progressing for low cost, 5,000tpa operation at Rio Grande Sur.
- Ongoing small batch lithium carbonate production to support offtake qualification while preserving capital discipline in current market conditions.
- Pursuit continues to advance its dual-pronged growth strategy progressing Rio Grande Sur while accelerating the evaluation of strategic gold, silver, and copper acquisitions in Argentina.
Figure 1 – Pursuit’s 99.5% Li₂CO₃ Sample Ready for Dispatch to Potential Offtake Partners
In relation to the dispatch of samples, Pursuit Managing Director & CEO, Aaron Revelle, said:
“Achieving 99.5% lithium carbonate purity is a major technical milestone for Pursuit and a clear demonstration of the capability embedded within our flowsheet, team, and pilot plant infrastructure. It not only validates the compatibility of our process design with Rio Grande Sur brines but also confirms our ability to deliver a consistently high-quality product suited to a wide range of industrial and energy storage applications. Dispatching these samples to potential offtake partners is a critical first step in our commercialisation pathway, enabling product qualification and accelerating engagement with strategic customers in tough market conditions. As we transition into the next phase of development, our focus is firmly on advancing feasibility for our 5,000tpa operation and securing long-term partnerships that will underpin the future production and growth of the Rio Grande Sur Project.”
Initial pilot production at Pursuit’s 250tpa Pilot Plant in Salta successfully produced 15 kilograms of lithium carbonate at 98.9% purity, validating both the compatibility of the Rio Grande Sur brine and the efficiency of the Company’s conventional processing flowsheet. To enhance product quality and simulate potential refinement steps at commercial scale, a portion of this material was further treated at bench scale using fractional crystallisation (FX) and ion exchange (IX) techniques. These post processing steps upgraded the product to 99.5% purity, meeting established benchmarks for technical-grade lithium carbonate.
The final product assays confirm not only the effectiveness of Pursuit’s downstream purification strategy but also the scalability and robustness of its broader flowsheet. This achievement represents a critical milestone on the path to commercial readiness supporting key feasibility assumptions, validating end product quality, and enabling active engagement with prospective offtake partners.
Pursuit is well positioned to undertake additional small-batch production as required to meet partner qualification needs and advance strategic discussions. Furthermore, it demonstrates Pursuit’s capability to produce high-purity lithium carbonate suitable for industrial use, with potential to meet battery-grade specifications through additional refinement.
Click here for the full ASX Release
This article includes content from Pursuit Minerals, licensed for the purpose of publishing on Investing News Australia. This article does not constitute financial product advice. It is your responsibility to perform proper due diligence before acting upon any information provided here. Please refer to our full disclaimer here.
Lithium Africa: Searching for Low-cost, Marquee Hardrock in Africa
Lithium Africa is a next-generation exploration company purpose-built to seize the opportunities of the coming lithium supercycle. With a focus on early-stage land acquisition, rapid drilling, and a landmark joint venture with Ganfeng Lithium, the company delivers maximum exploration efficiency, capital leverage, and de-risked discovery potential at scale.
Lithium Africa’s mission is to discover, de-risk, and monetize Tier 1 hard rock lithium assets through data-driven targeting, aggressive fieldwork, and disciplined exit strategies. Its partnership with Ganfeng—one of the world’s leading lithium producers—anchors its strategy with industrial expertise and financial strength from the earliest phases of project development.
Lithium Africa is the first company to implement a systematic, multi-jurisdictional discovery strategy across the continent, combining world-class geology with capital discipline and strategic focus to unlock the next generation of globally significant lithium deposits.
Company Highlights
- Exploration-focused Model: Lithium Africa focuses purely on discovery and value creation, with no intention to develop or operate a mine
- Strategic 50/50 JV with Ganfeng Lithium: Doubles exploration spending and provides access to processing expertise and long-term downstream offtake partners.
- Pan-African Footprint: Over 8,000 sq km of tenure across Zimbabwe, Morocco, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, and others – enabling diversification in discovery strategy.
- Contrarian, Countercyclical M&A: Well-capitalized and positioned to roll up distressed lithium juniors during a downcycle
- Rapid Permitting & Scalability: Target jurisdictions offer 3- to 4-year discovery-to-mine timelines versus 10 to 15 years in North America.
- RTO & Listing Expected by August 2025: Tight structure, early institutional support and significant near-term drilling catalysts
This Lithium Africa profile is part of a paid investor education campaign.*
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Lithium Africa
Investor Insight
Leveraging early-stage land acquisition, accelerated drilling and a strong strategic partnership, Lithium Africa delivers maximum exploration efficiency, capital leverage and de-risked lithium discovery upside at scale.
Overview
Lithium Africa is an exploration company purpose-built to capitalize on the next cycle of lithium demand. Its strategic mission is to discover, de-risk and monetize Tier 1 lithium assets through data-driven targeting, aggressive fieldwork and value-driven exits. The company's unique 50/50 joint venture with Ganfeng Lithium is the cornerstone of its strategy, providing both financial leverage and industrial alignment at the earliest stages of project development.
Africa remains largely underexplored for lithium despite sharing geological similarities with major hardrock lithium belts in Canada and Australia. Lithium Africa is the first company to systematically deploy a multi-jurisdictional discovery strategy across the continent – combining top-tier geology with capital efficiency and strategic clarity.
At the heart of Lithium Africa’s model is its joint venture with Ganfeng Lithium, one of the top two lithium chemical producers globally. The 50/50 JV, established in 2023, enables Lithium Africa to double its capital efficiency, with $1 raised equating to $2 spent on exploration. The partnership provides unmatched advantages: access to Ganfeng’s downstream processing know-how, established customer relationships with Tier 1 OEMs, and a long-term offtake framework that allows Lithium Africa to retain flexibility and optionality on any asset monetization.
Lithium Africa does not intend to develop or operate mines. Instead, the business model is designed around efficient land acquisition, aggressive de-risking via trenching, sampling, and early drilling, and ultimately monetizing high-value discoveries through royalties, sales or carried interests. In a down market, the company is actively pursuing counter-cyclical M&A opportunities to acquire stranded or undercapitalized lithium assets. With this strategy, Lithium Africa provides shareholders exposure to world-class discovery upside with significantly reduced financing risk.
Company Highlights
- Exploration-focused Model: Lithium Africa focuses purely on discovery and value creation, with no intention to develop or operate a mine
- Strategic 50/50 JV with Ganfeng Lithium: Doubles exploration spending and provides access to processing expertise and long-term downstream offtake partners.
- Pan-African Footprint: Over 8,000 sq km of tenure across Zimbabwe, Morocco, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, and others – enabling diversification in discovery strategy.
- Contrarian, Countercyclical M&A: Well-capitalized and positioned to roll up distressed lithium juniors during a downcycle
- Rapid Permitting & Scalability: Target jurisdictions offer 3- to 4-year discovery-to-mine timelines versus 10 to 15 years in North America.
- RTO & Listing Expected by August 2025: Tight structure, early institutional support and significant near-term drilling catalysts.
Key Projects
Zimbabwe
Birthday Gift Project (Flagship)
The Birthday Gift project is Lithium Africa’s flagship asset and highest-priority exploration target. Located along a >12 km pegmatite corridor, the project hosts three parallel, flat-lying spodumene-bearing pegmatites within metasediments. Surface trenching has returned multiple significant intercepts, including 100 m, 67 m, and 55 m widths with true thicknesses averaging ~35 m. Rock chip samples from fresh spodumene zones have returned assays as high as 5.25 percent lithium oxide. More than 3,000 geochemical samples have been collected, and a 1,500-meter RC drill program commenced in January 2025 to test a 1,300-meter strike length.
The pegmatites remain open at depth and along strike. SGS South Africa is performing ICP assay analysis, and environmental permitting and trenching on the western trend are ongoing.
The Birthday Gift asset has strong potential to support an inaugural resource estimate by late 2025.
West Africa
Torakoura in Bougouni District, Mali
Lithium Africa controls six highly prospective licenses in Mali, located within the prolific Bougouni Basin, home to Leo Lithium’s Goulamina project, one of the world’s largest spodumene deposits. The Torakoura permit is situated along the same structural corridors and granitic host rocks. Surface exploration has identified spodumene-bearing pegmatites, supported by strong lithium and pathfinder anomalies from historic soil sampling.
Initial drilling at Torakoura began in 2024 but paused for LIBS-to-ICP calibration. A new RC drilling campaign resumed in Q4 2024. These permits offer substantial scale and proximity advantages in a well-established lithium district with proven permitting and development pathways.
Adzopé & Regional Licenses, Côte d’Ivoire
In Côte d’Ivoire, Lithium Africa holds four early-stage but highly promising permits totaling 1,254 sq km. The Adzopé license has returned rock samples with lithium oxide values up to 0.98 percent. Field mapping and lithological sampling have been completed, and a 21,700-meter auger drilling program is planned to refine targets for follow-up RC and core drilling. The region is emerging as a new pegmatite belt in West Africa, and Lithium Africa has first-mover status in building a pipeline of discovery-stage projects.
Kobikoro Project, Guinea
The Kobikoro project in southeastern Guinea consists of four licenses covering 376 sq km in the Archean Kinema-Man domain. This district is part of the underexplored Kissidougou pegmatite belt. Historical stream sediment geochemistry conducted by BRGM highlights multiple anomalous trends in lithium, tantalum and niobium. The standout feature is a 20 km-long lithium-tantalum-niobium anomalous zone aligned with regional structures and underlain by fractionated granite intrusions.
Morocco
Bir El Mami
In 2024, Lithium Africa acquired a 585 sq km, district-scale land package in the Bir El Mami region of Morocco, located on the northern extension of the Tasiast greenstone belt. The project is notable for its spodumene-bearing pegmatites confirmed by surface rock samples, which include lithium values up to 862 parts per million (ppm), and historic soil anomalies up to 363 ppm. The region is emerging as a key lithium district given Morocco’s favorable trade agreements and a growing domestic EV battery manufacturing base. Lithium Africa is currently Morocco’s only major lithium concession holder, and early-stage target identification is underway as of Q1 2025. The company is well positioned to be Morocco’s lithium sector leader and consolidator.
Management Team
Tyron Breytenbach - CEO
Tyron Breytenbach is a former Detour Gold resource geologist and leading equity analyst at Stifel Canada and Cormark. He blends deep geology with institutional capital markets acumen.
Carl Esprey - Executive Chair
Carl Esprey is a former M&A analyst at BHP Billiton and fund manager at GLG Partners. He is the founder of several resource ventures and current CEO of Waraba Gold.
Coulibaly Mamadou - Executive Director
Coulibaly Mamadou is a geologist with 12 years’ experience in mineral exploration. Coulibaly started his career with Randgold, and has extensive knowledge of and experience with the West African Birimian geology.
Ben Gelber - VP Exploration
Ben Gelber is a former VP at Gold Line Resources and exploration manager at Barrick in Guyana. He has more than 19 years of lithium and gold exploration experience.
Dr. Jeroen van Duijvenbode - Development Geologist
With a PhD in geometallurgy, Jeroen van Duijvenbode is an expert in lithium pegmatite targeting and geochemical data interpretation.
Jamie Robinson - CFO
Jamie Robinson is a chartered accountant with extensive mining CFO experience across private and public markets. Prior to his stint in the mining sector, he worked with Deloitte in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Chris O’Connor - General Counsel
Chris is a lawyer with over 19 years of private practice and in-house experience, focused on capital markets, corporate finance and M&A transactions in emerging markets throughout Africa, Eastern Europe and the CIS.
Toluwalase Seriki - Non-Executive Director
Toluwalase Seriki is Ganfeng Lithium’s head of business development in Africa. He possesses a strong M&A and finance background.
Roy Zhang - Advisor
Roy Zhang has nearly 10 years of experience in investment, M&A and corporate development, and is experienced and knowledgeable in lithium trading through his role at Ganfeng.
Dr. Tom Benson - Advisor
Tom Benson is a Stanford PhD volcanologist who leads global exploration at Lithium Americas. He is a widely respected authority on caldera-related lithium resources across the industry.