The geology of the greater Arcadia area is dominated by greenstone lithologies of the Arcturus Formation of the Harare Greenstone Belt (HGB). These greenstones are encircled and intruded by a variable suite of granitic rocks, the oldest of which may have been intruded at a similar time with the youngest felsic volcanic rocks of the belt. There is also some evidence for a small remnant area of gneissic basement to the greenstone belt.

The HGB takes the form of a complex refolded synform structure, which outcrops in two major limbs.

The E-W trending Arcturus Limb occupies a broad band across the centre of the area, and to the west of the city of Harare this passes via a fold closure into the N-S trending Passaford Limb which is contiguous northwards to the greenstones of the Bindura area.

The main HGB lithological units comprise mainly meta-basalts, banded iron formations, metaandesites, serpentinites, dolerites and the lithium bearing pegmatites that also host beryl, tin and tantalite amongst others.

Four different rock types are found on the Arcadia and Green Mamba claims. These are metabasalt, pegmatite, dolerite and quartz veins, listed from relatively oldest to youngest. The pegmatites comprise the lithium bearing rocks and are of immediate relevance to the Project.

Pegmatite outcrops are coarse to very coarse grained, white to greyish white in colour and blocky in appearance with some oxidation along joint planes. However, natural pegmatite outcrops are rare. This is because they contain high proportions of feldspar which readily weather to clay minerals such as kaolinite and hectorite. The pegmatite mineralogy is dominated by feldspars (mostly albite), lesser quartz and muscovite. The contained lithium bearing minerals include petalite, spodumene, eucryptite and rare lepidolite.

The ore bodies that constitute the reserve show local variation, notably in the proportions of the two main lithium ore minerals; spodumene and petalite. However, there is actually little overall lithological variation among the ore bodies, which are essentially lithium rich quartz-feldspar pegmatites. Detailed XRD and petrographic studies have deduced that the ore bodies consist on average of:
- 45% various feldspars, notably albite;
- 30% quartz;
- 19% lithium minerals, predominantly petalite and spodumene, with an average weight ratio of 2:1;
- 4% muscovite, in solid solution with subsidiary amounts of lepidolite.

The pegmatite bodies are also concentrically zoned. The outer-most zones are the wall and aplitic zones, which are fine grained and comprise mostly feldspar, quartz and muscovite with some rare lepidolite. The intermediate zone is the widest of all the zones and has a coarse to very coarse-grained texture. Furthermore, the intermediate zone hosts petalite and spodumene, along with feldspar and quartz. The centre-most zone is referred to as the core zone, which is dominated by coarse grained quartz and muscovite. However, the core zone is not always developed. It is important to note that the thickness of each zone varies, depending on the thickness of the entire pegmatite body.

The current mining schedule developed has been revised to suit operations at 2.4 Mtpa.

Due to the shallowness of the orebody, open pit mining method is the most economic extraction method.

Waste dumps will be located as close as possible to pit exit points to minimise haulage profiles without disrupting the access to the minable resource or crushing plant.

The Main Pit has been designed in four phases to maximise Project discounted cash flow. This includes two small “starter” pits within the first phase pit to be mined at the commencement of operations, thus allowing for the mine schedule to minimise waste mining in the early years and maximise the lithium grades of the ore fed to the process plant, while maintaining practical mining practices including a minimum working width.

Mining operations will be conducted utilising a contracted fleet for key equipment with some ancillary vehicles being supplied by the mine operator. PLZ will be in charge of managing and supervising the contractor to ensure compliance with all business ethics, environmental and occupational health and safety requirements.

It is planned that track mounted diesel hydraulic backhoe excavators will load ore and waste into dump trucks. Ore grading 1% Li2O or more will be transported to the run of mine (ROM) pad where it will be stockpiled in fingers prior to reclamation by front end loader. Lower grade ore will be stockpiled for later processing or blending with high grade ore to control treatment plant head grade.

Waste material will require blasting except for some of the upper weathered rocks. Topsoil will be pre-stripped to a separate dumpsite for future use in rehabilitation at mine closure stage. Ore and waste will be identified and mined separately in 2.5 to 10-metre-high benches. Ore boundaries will be identified using grade control drilling, blast hole sampling and cross pit trenching.

Two-stage crushing followed by HPGR has been selected to achieve the sub 5 mm crush size required to achieve adequate liberation of petalite for primary recovery by DMS. DMS feed preparation is based on secondary crusher product feeding HPGR crushing operating at medium pressure. Approximately 68% of plant feed will report to DMS at a bottom cut-off size (BCOS) of 0.6 mm. Primary crushing capacity will be set at 2.4 Mtpa from the outset.

The processing plant will capable of producing several lithium mineral concentrates, as well as a tantalite concentrate.

Conventional beneficiation techniques including dense medium separation (DMS) to recover petalite, gravity-based processes to recover tantalite, and froth flotation to recover spodumene have been retained from the DFS (2019). Key areas of subsequent testing included the use of high pressure grinding rolls (HPGR) technology, ongoing DMS optimisation and locked cycle spodumene flotation. Testwork was carried out on the MP and LMP zones during 2019 and 2020, and the data derived from these programmes has been applied by Lycopodium to current process and engineering design.

The target grade for petalite products is 4% Li2O (i.e. 82% petalite). DMS testwork has demonstrated that 80% of all DMS petalite concentrates produced from Arcadia ores coarser than 1.7 mm will meet specifications for technical grade product, with Fe2O3 substantially less than ........