Categories: Energy
Topics: Lithium Stocks

Q2 Metals (TSX-V: QTWO)(OTC: QUEXF) VPE Neil McCallum on Best Intercept Ever at 100% Owned Cisco Lithium Project

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the VP of Exploration for Q2 Metals (TSX-V: QTWO)(OTC: QUEXF), Mr. Neil McCallum. Neil, it's great to have you back on. How are you?

Neil McCallum: Yeah. I'm great. Thanks. How are you?

Gerardo Del Real: I am well. I wanted to have you back on, because you had some news here recently, just some absolutely spectacular numbers. You drilled 457 meters of continuous spodumene pegmatite. It's the widest interval to date at the Cisco project, the hundred-percent-owned Cisco project. So first and foremost, congratulations. That's got to be the best hit of your career, because if I'm not mistaken, it's one of the single best continuous holes ever drilled on a lithium project.

Neil McCallum: Yeah. We've done a little bit of comparison of the data that's public right now, and for that continuous interval, it stacks up as the top, definitely the top three at least. There's a few other projects that are out there in Africa, and there's another one in Ontario that it's not certain whether that's down-dip or not, but it's also quite a large hit. But this one is definitely right in the middle of our zone, so very happy to have that coming out.

Gerardo Del Real: No. Look, and it was far from a one-off. Right? All eight holes that you reported on intercepted pegmatite that had visual indications of spodumene. And so I was hoping you could provide some context just about the direction of the program, how things are stacking up, and then, obviously, let's talk about how the last few months of the year are going to close out. Because we're starting to see a clear bottoming in the lithium space, and we're starting to see a little bit more momentum, especially with the Australian lithium plays right now. And I think that's going to spill over here on the Canadian and North American side here soon.

Neil McCallum: Yeah. Definitely. Okay. So really, what we're doing right now with our drilling program is now that we're financed for the foreseeable future with a recent raise of $26 million in the bank, that's all flow-through money, so it's going to go mostly to drilling. So what we're doing right now is taking that exploration target that we generated in July, which is the 215 to 329 million tonnes on the project with a grade range of between one and 1.38 lithium oxide.

So that's really given us a benchmark of where we could see ourselves when we, eventually, get towards a mineral resource estimate. So the current drilling is really just taking what we've done so far on a widely-spaced drill program and filling in. So that Hole 44 is drilled where we roughly expected the zone to be based on our interpretation, and it ended up being better than we expected. It's right close to a few other holes.

So that just goes to show there's a few surprises on the project still, and there's definitely, beyond the infill drilling that we're doing right now, there's also untested zones that we haven't even yet drill tested and extension to the Northeast and Southwest that we need to close off the deposit or ... I can't say deposit, but the zone that we're defining at the moment. So there's a lot of work we're doing in the next few months.

We're going to be drilling up until the end of September, and again at the end of October till Christmas, and then getting back out there for the winter program. Once we restart in October, we'll have four drill rigs running on the project, achieving that ultimate goal of the initial resource estimate. That's kind of the projection forwards.

Gerardo Del Real: Yeah. A lot to like, obviously, there, Neil. I got to ask you, can you speak a bit on the recent metwork and how that's advancing? Because look, you benefit from phenomenal infrastructure. You clearly have a world-class tier one lithium asset that I think is going to become more and more in demand here as time passes. But can you speak to the metwork that's going on?

Neil McCallum: Yeah. Definitely. So the project, as you know, is pretty well all spodumene-dominated for the lithium content that we're seeing, which is exactly what we want to have for the good processing method, the DMS, dense media separation, which is known to be the most simple and cost-effective separation method to get to a concentrate. We've done the test work that shows that what we have on our project can get to a roughly 70% recovery with those heavy liquid separation tests and low iron content, which is good and expected.

So all that work, we're going to keep moving forward with, just spreading out. Because those were initial tests, and there's a lot more to do to confirm that and tweak little parameters to increase the potential recoveries. But it's all kind of in line with what we've expected for this project, being that DMS-amenable separation towards a concentrate.

Gerardo Del Real: No. Listen, tonnes of catalysts moving forward. Always great to have you on, Neil, and hopefully, we have you back on soon. Plenty, plenty to talk about between now and year end.

Neil McCallum: Oh yeah. There's a lot more work ahead of us for sure. So lots of news coming out.

Gerardo Del Real: No. Thanks so much. Keep up the good work out there. Appreciate it.

Neil McCallum: Yep. Thanks.