- The pegmatite remains open on surface to the south and at depth.
- A total of 93 drill holes have been completed at Xuxa with an average depth per hole of 243 meters for a total of 13,976 meters.
- The Xuxa pegmatite is approximately 1.7km long and is 14-16m wide and strikes northwest to southeast dipping around 50 degrees west.
- The pegmatite contains large crystals of spodumene, which are easily visible in the drill cores.

The proposed mining operations are based on the use of hydraulic excavators and a haul truck fleet engaged in conventional open pit mining techniques.

Excavated material will be loaded to trucks and hauled to either the ROM pad or the waste piles. Ore excavation and haulage will be monitored by quality-control personnel and details of material movement will be recorded by a radio dispatch system. Weathered material is considered to be free dig with transitional material to be lightly blasted to loosen it for digging. Fresh rock will be typically blasted on 6m benches for ore domain and 12m benches for waste domain. In order to reduce dilution and maximize mine recovery, controlled blasting (pre-splitting) will be used.


The mine layout and operation are based on the following criteria:
• Two independent open pits areas: Pit 1 in the north and Pit 2 in the south
• Single access from both pits to the mine infrastructure pad and the processing plant
• Low height ore benches to reduce mine dilution and maximize mine recovery
• Pre-splitting of the ore zone to reduce mine dilution
• Elevated inter-ramp angles for the waste to reduce strip ratio.


The basis for the scheduling includes:
• Six months of pre-stripping to liberate the ore
• Mining of Pit 1 first as this is closer to the processing plant and is also included in the current
environmental license process
• Disposal of the waste rock at the start of operation at pile 1 (close to processing plant) and pile 2
• Commence disposal of waste rock at pile 3 after one year and three months from the start of the
operation
• Commence mining of Pit 2 from Year 3 onwards
• Mine both pits in conjunction from Year 3 to Year 6 to reduce the drop-down rate and to facilitate
the 1.5 Mtpa production rate
• The planned open pit mine life is nine years and three months
• The mining fleet is based on off-highway trucks for the waste movement and road trucks for the
ore to be operated by a mining contractor.
The open pit mining activities were assumed to be primarily undertaken by a contractor-operated fleet.

The proposed plant processing rate allowed a total ore material movement of under 2 Mtpa, which is suitable for small equipment such as on-highway trucks.

Small excavator and loading equipment are also suitable for ore selectivity, whilst maintaining productivity in 6-m operational benches.

Off-highway trucks were considered for the waste rock given a production of around 18 Mtpa.

For waste rock, an excavator of 15 m3 (Hitachi 2500 or similar) was selected to load 150-t class trucks (CAT 785 or similar). For ore, a 4.6 m3 excavator (CAT 374 or similar) was selected to work with a 40-t truck (Actros 8x4 or similar). The same support equipment class was defined for both.

The Xuxa Plant will be located approximately 1.7 km and 2.3km from the north and south Xuxa mine open-pits, respectively. The DMS plant will use proven and well-established technology, and is designed to produce 220,000 tonnes per annum of minimum 6.0% Li2O concentrate with an iron content of below 1% Fe2O3. The lithium concentrate particle size is anticipated to be between +0.5mm to 9.5mm.

The plant throughput capacity is based on 1.5 Mtpa (dry) of ore fed to the crushing circuit. The current Xuxa Plant design also contemplates a modular and integrated expansion option, with the installation of an in-house crushing circuit to potentially increase processing capacity to 3.0 Mtpa.

The Xuxa Plant will include the following:
- A three-stage conventional crushing and screening circuit.
- DMS screening and mica removal via up-flow classification.
- Two-stage DMS circuit for coarse fraction.
- Two-stage DMS circuit for fines fraction with a magneti ........