Piedmont Lithium Ltd (ASX:PLL) (NASDAQ:PLL) has expanded the current drilling program by an additional 25,000 metres with three more drill rigs added for a total for five rigs at its Piedmont Lithium Project in North Carolina.
The three additional drill rigs will arrive in the field in the coming weeks.
Piedmont’s expanded drill program is designed to complete the infill drilling on the Core Property with the object of upgrading the mineral resource classification category for select areas from the inferred category to the measured and indicated category.
The company plans to publish a resource estimate update for the Core Property in Q2, 2021, in support of reporting ore reserve and completion of a definitive feasibility study in mid-2021.
Dual objectives
Piedmont president and chief executive officer Keith Phillips said: “We are excited to be aggressively expanding our drill program with five drill rigs soon to be in the field.
“Our dual objectives are to upgrade the current inferred resources within the Core Property to support our upcoming definitive feasibility studies, while also growing the overall scale of our mineral resource tonnage.
“The Carolina tin-spodumene belt is one of the world’s most prolific lithium belts and we are hopeful that we will ultimately delineate North America’s largest spodumene resource, ideally located in North Carolina to power North America’s clean energy storage and EV revolution.”
Expanded drill program
The expanded drill program will also continue to explore the numerous spodumene pegmatites, which have been discovered on the company’s properties over the past several months and assays are pending for several of these new discoveries.
The company also plans an update to the mineral resource estimate of the Central Property in early 2021, based on the result of exploration, drilling on the property completed in September 2020.
Piedmont expects to complete the expanded drill program in late spring 2021 but acknowledges that the schedule may be impacted by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
