Canadian prospector BlueBird Battery Metals has tipped its toe into M&A waters, wholly acquiring private Australian company Southern Lithium and further amassing more prospective battery minerals tenements in Western Australia.
The acquisition, which is conditionally valued at up to $5m will see BlueBird add the Southern Lithium Project to its books.
The project consists of twelve tenements totalling 664km2 located across the Yilgarn Lithium Province, stretching throughout WA’s Goldfields and Wheatbelt provinces.
Nine of the company’s tenements are situated on granted exploration licences with three at the exploration licence application stage.
The region is rich in lithium, hosting a number of large-scale projects, such as the Earl Grey deposit and the Bald Hill and Mt Marion producing mines.
Commenting on the bulking up of its lithium books, BlueBird CEO Nav Dhaliwal said:
This strategic acquisition for BlueBird secures a highly-prospective land position within an emerging hard rock lithium district. With its stable pro-mining politics and straightforward permitting environment, Western Australia has emerged as a preferred source of high-quality lithium and tantalum supply.
“We are excited by the scope of the opportunity before us. The district has been proven to host large-scale lithium mineralisation associated with pegmatite structures. Several pegmatite targets have been mapped within the assembled tenements, none of which have been evaluated for lithium.
“That opportunity, combined with the well-established infrastructure throughout Western Australia, provides for a particularly compelling value proposition. We look forward to commencing exploration as soon as possible to prioritize targets for drilling,” he said.
Bluebird is expected to commence its exploration campaign through mapping, sampling and imaging of the known pegmatites within its new tenements, with the aim of developing high-quality drilling targets.
The company has said a combination of magnetics, gravity, radiometrics and thermal imaging will also be utilised prior to drilling.
