Salt Lake Potash excited by Lake Wells prospects

The AIM-quoted company said that its primary focus during the three months to 31 December 2015 was the advancement of the Lake Wells Project, to confirm its potential to host a large, high grade salt lake brine project to produce Sulphate of Potash for domestic and international fertiliser markets.

During the initial shallow core drilling programme, the company said a total of 32 shallow hole auger cores were completed over the entire surface of the lake, forming the basis of its maiden resource estimate.

The company then completed its maiden Joint Ore Resource Committee (JORC) mineral resource estimate for the project, totalling 29m tonnes of Sulphate of Potash.

Approximately 80% was in the 'measured' category, with what Salt Lake Potash described as 'excellent' brine chemistry of 4,009 mg/L potassium and 19,175 mg/L sulphate.

Salt Lake Potash also completed 27 air core drill holes for a total of 1,697m over the entire surface of the lake, with an average drill depth of 63m. The majority of the holes ended in high grade brine, with the brine pool remaining open at depth.

"The successful air core programme identified permeable rock units (aquifers) at the base of the brine saturated sedimentary sequence, potentially representing a productive aquifer for brine extraction by pumping from bores - a very encouraging result", the company said in a statement.

Moving forward, the firm said it had commenced laboratory isothermal evaporation trials on bulk brine samples to define the evaporation patterns, estimate the salting points of mixed salts and predict the conditions for the production of schoenite salt - a key step in the production of Sulphate of Potash.

It said an updated JORC Mineral Resource estimate, incorporating the results from the deeper air core programme was currently in progress, and pump testing of three types of aquifers at Lake Wells would commence shortly, testing the permeability and storage properties of the aquifers hosting the brine.

At 14:20GMT, shares in Salt Lake Potash were up 4.05%, trading at 9.62p in London.