The Project area lies within the Birimian Supergroup, a Proterozoic volcano-sedimentary basin located in Western Ghana. The Project area is underlain by three forms of metamorphosed schist; mica schist, staurolite schist and garnet schist. Several granitoids intrude the basin metasediments as small plugs. These granitoids range in composition from intermediate granodiorite (often medium grained) to felsic leucogranites (often coarse to pegmatoidal grain size), sometimes in close association with pegmatite veins and bodies.

Pegmatite intrusions generally occur as sub-vertical dykes with two dominant trends: either striking north-northeast (Ewoyaa Main) and dipping sub-vertically to moderately southeast to east-southeast, or striking west-northwest (Abonko, Kaampakrom and Ewoyaa Northeast) dipping sub-vertically northeast. Pegmatite thickness varies across the Project, with thinner mineralised units intersected at Abonko and Kaampakrom between 4m and 12m; and thicker units intersected at Ewoyaa Main between 30m and 60m, and up to 100m at surface.

The Project area has two clearly defined domains or material types of spodumene bearing lithium mineralisation. IronRidge has termed these material types as Pegmatite Type P1 and Pegmatite Type P2; viz:
- P1: Coarse grained spodumene material, the dominant spodumene bearing pegmatite encountered to date, exhibiting very coarse to pegmatoidal, euhedral to subhedral spodumene crystals composing 20 to 40% of th ........

Conventional open pit mining is considered as the preferred mining method for the Project since the ore presents near surface and there is space to construct waste dumps. A contract mining operation is proposed given the abundance of experienced well established local contractors in Ghana.

The PFS assumes that all material will require some form of drill and blast. Open pit mining will utilise three main 120t excavators and 90t dump trucks supported by an appropriate ancillary fleet.

This equipment matches the scale of the operation and the mining environment across the distinct mining areas.

Effectively five mining areas including fourteen individual ultimate pits will be developed. A bench height of up to 10m, excavated in 2.5m flitches, is proposed to achieve acceptable levels of dilution and ore loss and to match the excavator size. Vegetation will be cleared and grubbed prior to topsoil stripping and later used to cover the topsoil stockpiles. Topsoil will be stockpiled and retained for later rehabilitation at the site.

The operation will employ a strategy of partial direct tipping with approximately 60% of crusher feed coming from rehandling run of mine (“ROM”) ore. The lower recovery/grade long term stockpiles, predominantly comprising P2 material, will be rehandled and fed to the plant after the priority P1 materials have been processed, or if ore supply interruptions are experienced from the mine.

The schedule i ........

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