The project is a lithium salt lake deposit, located in a closed basin in the Andean mountain range in Northern Argentina.

The sediments within the salar consist of halite, clay, silt, sand and gravel which have accumulated in the salar from terrestrial sedimentation from the sides of the basin. Brine hosting dissolved lithium is present in pore spaces and fractures within unconsolidated sediments.

Evaporation of brines entering and within the salt lake generates the concentrated lithium that is extracted by pumping out the brine.

The sediments are interpreted to be essentially flat lying with unconfined aquifer conditions close to surface and semi-confined to confined conditions at depth.

Salar de Cauchari is a mixed style salar, with a halite nucleus in the centre of the Salar overlain with up to 50 m of fine grained (clay) sediments. The halite core is interbedded with clayey to silty and sandy layers. The Salar is surrounded by relative coarse grained alluvial and fluvial sediments. These fans demark the perimeter of the actual Salar visible in satellite images and at depth extend towards the centre of the Salar where they form the distal facies with an increase in sand and silt. At depth (between 300 m and 600 m) a deep sand unit has been intercepted in several core holes in the SE Sector of the Project area.

The brines from Salar de Cauchari are solutions nearly saturated in sodium chloride with an average concentrat ........

Lithium bearing brine hosted in pore spaces within sediments in the salar will be extracted by pumping using a series of production wells to pump brine to evaporation ponds for its concentration. Extraction of brine does not require open pit or underground mining.

Based on the results of the pumping tests carried out for the Project, the brine extraction from Salar de Cauchari will take place by installing and operating two conventional production wellfields. The brine production will take place initially from a wellfield in the NW Sector immediately adjacent to the evaporation ponds on the Archibarca Fan from Year 1 through to Year 9. After Year 9 it is planned that the brine production will shift to a second wellfield constructed in the SE Sector.

The combined production from the NW wellfield will ramp up from 170 l/s in Year 1 to approximately 460 l/s in Year 8. It is expected that pumping rates of individual wells in the NW wellfield will vary between 20 l/s and 30 l/s so that up to 22 wells may be required to meet the overall brine production requirements. The NW production wells are located on the main access roads between the evaporation ponds and will be drilled and completed to a depth of approximately 360 m in the lower brine aquifer of the Archibarca fan. The upper part of the production wells through the Archibarca fresh to brackish water aquifer will be entirely cemented and sealed to an approximate depth of 140 m to avoid any freshwater inf ........

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