Locksley punches into first US antimony drill program
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Craig Nolan
Promising antimony producer Locksley Resources has launched its first drilling program at the company’s flagship Desert Antimony Mine, part of the broader Mojave project in the US state of California.
The company’s first diamond drilling campaign will focus on stretches of known high-grade antimony mineralization underlying historic workings at the site, with the drill rig now operational and drilling into potentially mineral-rich ground.
In a series of game-changing moves, management conducted detailed surface exposure mapping during site preparation activities, following a comprehensive high-resolution subsurface mapping program.
The two programs came together like bread and butter to provide the company with crucial geological information and surface mapping that confirmed technical findings from the underground program.
The company believes that the combination of the two programs unlocks the potential for multiple antimony-containing structures at the Desert Antimony Mine.
‘The start of drilling at the Desert Antimony Mine is a decisive milestone for our company.’
Locksley Resources managing director and chief executive Kerrie Matthews
Management says the surface program confirms the orientation and continuity of major stibnite veins at surface, structural framework and offsets revealed by high-resolution subsurface surveys.
He believes that improved insights into the mineralized structure of the project have significantly increased confidence in the priority targets identified and supported the expected drilling sequence to lock in the most promising initial prospects.
Locksley Resources managing director and chief executive Kerrie Matthews said: “The start of drilling at the Desert Antimony Mine is a decisive milestone for our company. With strong momentum behind us, we are moving forward with determination to unlock a potential strategic asset that will play a key role in reshaping the future of critical mineral supply.”
Matthews believes that with design and construction bidding to be formalized shortly, the project could support U.S. antimony supplies in the short term through the proposed pilot plant.
The company’s diamond drilling program will test high-grade antimony mineralization identified from sources including historical mining, surface sampling, 3D geological modeling and current subsurface mapping.
The main objectives of the program are to target strike and depth extensions of the ore system, integrate data from antimony veins exposed in the surface bedrock, provide optimal drilling orientation for maximum drilling effect, and provide a better understanding of the field geology.
Locksley believes the aboveground and underground programs enable the company to focus on its priority goals with greater precision and provide a path for rapid resource growth.
The powerful US Government has designated antimony as a critical mineral, with currently minimal domestic production. Only MP Materials’ nearby groundbreaking Mountain Pass antimony and rare earth mines produce the mineral domestically.
Locksley plans to focus on the production and qualification of antimony trioxide and antimony trisulfide.
Antimony trioxide is a critical component in electronics, plastics, fire retardants, and energy applications. Antimony trisulfide is used as a strategic industrial material for pigments and pyrotechnics and is used in defense systems, primers, and specialty chemicals.
Notably, the latest subsurface mapping program also brought the bonus of revealing a new ablation zone, the Beefeater Shear, a 10m to 15m wide north-south corridor between the Desert Antimony Mine and the company’s potential Hendricks target.
Management says Beefeater Shear reflects the structural arrangement and change signature of the high-quality Desert Antimony system, opening up the possibility of a significant new antimony discovery at the project.
Last week, the company gave another boost, revealing that metallurgical testing studies had successfully produced metallic antimony with better than 99 percent purity from material obtained from the Desert Antimony Mine.
The ongoing metallurgical optimization program targets defense-grade antimony and aims to ensure a secure, fully domestic U.S. supply chain for the strategic mineral. The test run schedule is a vital step in fixing a commercially valid process flowchart.
Locksley is now in the enviable position of launching an exercise program that, if successful, could allow him to get one foot in the door of becoming the U.S. Government’s supplier of antimony and the other foot down the throat of potential competitive rivals.
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