Global Geoscience Limited (ASX:GSC) Managing Director Bernard Rowe, discusses the company’s lithium/boron project in Nevada and plans for low cost production


Global Geoscience Limited (ASX:GSC) is an ASX listed exploration company, we’re active in Nevada in the United States. Our main project or focus in Nevada is a lithium/boron project, Rhyolite Ridge. We have a market capitalisation of approximately $200 million and we’re advancing the Rhyolite Ridge project towards prefeasibility.

Rhyolite Ridge is located in southern Nevada, approximately halfway between Las Vegas and Reno, quite close to a highway. It’s a large lithium/boron deposit, it outcrops and we’ve completed a resource estimate. And we’re now moving towards a prefeasibility study stage, which we anticipate having completed towards the end of 2017.

It’s unique because of the mix of lithium and boron really. There’re very few deposits of this type anywhere in the world. Certainly in the United States, there’s nothing comparable with that combination of the lithium and boron, and also the fact that it’s close to the surface. In fact, it actually outcrops.

We’ve already announced a JORC compliant resource. We’re just about to go into infill the resource to upgrade it to a measured category, which we can then use for our prefeasibility study. But the prefeasibility study is really the focus of the remainder of 2017 for us.

The work program is very much centred around the preparation for the prefeasibility study. And just the basic components of that I guess are the upgrading of the resource, which involves a drilling program, which we’re hoping to commence within the next month approximately. We’re also doing more metallurgical test work, which will form part of the prefeasibility as well. And then that’ll lead to some economic modelling and conceptual pit designs etc.

In terms of a potential offtake on the Rhyolite Ridge project, obviously we’re dealing with lithium and boron. Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSL) is an obvious party that we’ll be talking to in the future, given our location. Tesla use lithium hydroxide in their batteries, rather than lithium carbonate. But the beauty of a deposit like the one that we have at Rhyolite Ridge is that it can produce either of those products, lithium carbonate or lithium hydroxide onsite. So certainly Tesla an obvious group for us to be talking to, but we’ll also be talking to other parties, both on the lithium and the boron.

In 12 months from now, I’m expecting that we will have completed a prefeasibility study at Rhyolite Ridge to demonstrate the general economics of the project. We will then be moving into a feasibility study stage, which will involve permitting of a potential mine. And then the steps required to take the project towards a production decision.


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