The Kathleen Valley Lithium Project is located on the western edge of the Norseman-Wiluna Greenstone Belt within the Archaean Yilgarn Craton of Western Australia. The belt consists of mafic and ultramafic volcanics with considerable volumes of clastic sediments, minor felsic volcanics and differentiate gabbros. The greenstones in the Kathleen Valley area have been metamorphosed to upper greenschist-lower amphibolite facies metamorphic grades and include tholeiitic lavas, differentiated gabbroic sills and ultramafic chlorite schists.

Lithium mineralisation is hosted within spodumene-bearing pegmatites, which are part of a series of lithium-caesium-tantalum (LCT)-type rare metal pegmatites that intrude mafic and sedimentary rocks in the region.

Twenty mineralised pegmatites have been identified at the Kathleen Valley Project hosted by two, outcropping, NW/SE trending pegmatite swarms – a shallowly-dipping, north-eastern swarm (Kathleen’s Corner), which contains approximately 90% of the pegmatites, and a steeper dipping south-western swarm (Mt Mann). The two swarms are interpreted to merge at depth to form a single, thick, moderately dipping mineralised body which remains open down-dip and along strike.

Most of the lithium is contained within spodumene. Small, isolated zones of petalite mineralisation have been observed in the north-western part of the deposit (this material equates to <0.5% of the resource samples).

The mineralisation ........

The proposed mining operations at Kathleen Valley will comprise both open pit and underground mining, with the underground operations providing most of the ore feed over the estimated 23-year
mine life.

The underground mine is divided into two separate mining areas:
• The Mount Mann Vertical (MMV), which comprises a 5-40m wide orebody dipping at 50° to 60° to the south-west; and
• The NorthWest Flats (NWF), which comprises multiple stacked, flat to shallow dipping pegmatite lodes that range from 4-30m thick

The mineralisation at Kathleen Valley extends from surface and would be suitable for open pit mining. High grade mineralisation is present at depth and would be suitable for underground mining.

Open Pit
Two small open pits will be developed, one at the MMV and one at the NWF. Both open pits will be used to provide long term access portals to the underground.

The open pit has been designed to supply ore for the plant in the first 1-2 years until the underground operation is ramped-up to full capacity. The open pit designs contain a total of 3.3Mt of ore, at a diluted grade of 1.2% Li2O / 141ppm Ta2O5. The pits contain 22Mt of waste material and 3.2Mt of ore for an average strip ratio of 6.8:1. Importantly most of the open pit mining is completed concurrently with the construction phase to provide ore at start-up, thereby de-risking initial operations.

Open pit mining dilution was applied usi ........

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