Feb 22 2019
QMC Quantum Minerals Corp. takes pleasure in announcing that it has started drilling on its Irgon Lithium Mine Project situated within the prolific Cat Lake-Winnipeg River rare-element pegmatite field of S.E. Manitoba, which also operates the adjacent Tantalum Mining Corporation of Canada rare-element pegmatite.
Currently, the drill contractor’s crew and resources as well as the technical team from QMC are on-site at the Irgon Lithium Mine Project. The first hole of Phase 1 program has been collared with drilling presently in progress. For this program, about 1500 m of NQ drilling, in 12 holes, has been planned.
SGS Canada, the company’s consultant, designed this drilling program to affirm and extend pegmatite intersections and lithium grades received during the historic 1953/1954 drilling program and those derived from channel sampling during the historic underground development on the Irgon Dike. In order to calculate a NI43-101 compliant inferred resource for the property, SGS will use all data at hand, which include results obtained from QMC’s recent surface channel sampling program, assay results from the present drilling, Lithium Corporation of Canada (LCOC) historic results from the underground channel samples obtained from the 74-m level crosscuts, and results from the historic LCOC drill program.
Historical Resource
From 1953 to 1954, 25 holes were drilled into the Irgon Dike by the LCOC, and later, a historical resource estimate of 1.2 million tons grading 1.51% Li2O over a strike length of 365 m and a depth of 213 m (Northern Miner, Vol. 41, no.19, Aug. 4, 1955, p.3) has been reported. This historical resource estimate has been documented in a 1956 Assessment Report (Manitoba Assessment Report No. 94932) by B. B. Bannatyne for the LCOC and was found to depend on reasonable assumptions. Both the company and the QP have no reason to oppose the document’s dependability and importance. This historical resource can be updated to present NI 43-101 norms using the detailed channel sampling followed by a drill program. Historic metallurgical tests revealed that a concentrate grade averaging 5.9% Li2O was achieved at a recovery rate of 87%.
A complete on-site mining plant was set up during this historic 1950s era work program, which was planned to handle 500 tons of ore each day, and a three-compartment shaft was submerged to a depth of 74 m. On the 61-m level, the lateral development was the extension of the shaft to a total of 366 m of drifting, from which seven crosscuts transected the dike. The work was postponed in 1957, expecting a more favorable market for lithium oxides, and the mine buildings were cleaned off during this time.