Overview

Mine Type	Open Pit & Underground
Status	Active
Commodities	Spodumene Tantalum Lithium
Mining Method	Truck & Shovel / Loader Transverse open stoping Room-and-pillar
Backfill type	...
Production Start	...
Mine Life	...
Snapshot	The Kathleen Valley Lithium Project is a Tier-1 battery metals asset with excellent grade and scale in one of world’s best mining districts. Open pit mining at Mt Mann and Kathleen’s Corner pits commenced in January 2023, with ore being mined from surface. Ore is being stockpiled for processing through the processing plant. On July 31, 2024, Liontown Resources’ Kathleen Valley lithium project in Western Australia produced its first spodumene concentrate. Liontown will now focus on completing the remaining commissioning activities in the non-critical path areas of the plant, concluding construction of critical underground infrastructure such as the Paste Fill plant and ramping up the process plant to 3Mtpa throughput. Full nameplate production of 3Mtpa is expected by the end of Q1 CY2025 with lithium recoveries expected to be optimised over the next 12-to-18-month period.

Deposit type

• Pegmatite

Summary:

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 is contained within pegmatite veins that are readily distinguished from the surrounding rocks. Sectional interpretation and wireframing indicates good continuity of the interpreted pegmatite veins both on-section and between sections. The confidence in the grade and geological continuity is reflected by the assigned resource classification.

Twenty lithium mineralised pegmatites have been identified at the Kathleen Valley Project which extend from surface to a depth of 640 m.

At Mt Mann, two steeply-dipping (-70° west) pegmatites have been drilled over a strike length of 1,200 m and to a vertical depth of around 300 m to 400 m. The two pegmatites are up to 35 m thick and have average thicknesses of 9 m and 11 m.

At Kathleen’s Corner, 18 sub-horizontal pegmatites have been drilled over an area of 1,800 m by 1,300 m. These pegmatites outcrop in the northeast and are up to 40 m thick with an average thickness of 8 m. The pegmatites coalesce and merge with the Mt Mann pegmatites at approximately 300 m to 400 m below surface to form a single, thick (35 m to 75 m) mineralised body that extends for a further 600 m to 700 m down-dip.

Mining Methods

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Comminution

Crushers and Mills

Processing

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Production

Personnel

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