Categories: Base Metals / Energy
Topics: General Base Metals / General Energy

TinOne Resources (TSX-V: TORC)(OTCQB: TORCF) CEO Chris Donaldson on New Lithium Discovery on 100% owned Aberfolyle project in Australia

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the executive chairman of Lithium One. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. The executive chairman of TinOne Resources. Mr. Chris Donaldson. Chris, a little tongue in cheek there before we get into it. How are you sir?

Chris Donaldson: I'm doing great, Gerardo. Thanks for having me on here this morning.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, listen, let's get right into it. We've been talking about your tin projects for several months now. They're excellent projects in top-notch jurisdictions. There's a clear goal there, as far as resource estimates and growing that, and then there's a clear goal to monetize those assets. You had some news, hence the Lithium One joke, here recently where you've discovered lithium at your hundred percent owned project while you were prospecting for tin and tungsten. Now, it would be very easy for me and anyone that's skeptical, because this is that kind of high risk, high reward business that we're in, to say, "Well, how convenient for Chris and them to find lithium all of a sudden.”

When I started digging into the release, kind of playing devil's advocate, I looked and I thought, "Well, did they just sample like a little corner somewhere?" Then I looked and I see this covers an area of at least eight kilometers by four kilometers. That piqued my interest. I then see the x-ray analysis that you did and the host mineral, and you make a very good point in pointing out that most of the significant lithium projects in Europe and elsewhere in the world have this host mineral. I want to get into all of that, but it sounds like you're onto at least a very early stage significant lithium discovery at an otherwise tin and tungsten project.

Chris Donaldson: Yeah, it's been a bit of surprise to us. So I mean, if you remember, we've been working our, we'll call it our flagship project, the Great Pyramid. We did 5,000 meters of drilling on that, and had some good results. We're trying to expand on the historical resource there. While that was going on, we were prepping our other project, which is only about half an hour down the road called Aberfoyle. Aberfoyle is, it's an historical tin, tungsten producing district, produced over 2 million tonnes of tin and tungsten. But it hadn't seen a lot of modern exploration, so we went back and re-assayed it, and did some multi-element assays on some ground samples that we got there. These weren't targeting lithium by any means. We did composite tests on them and turns out we've got some pretty good levels of lithium there.

This is not a pivot for us. You're bringing up a good point. Obviously, the lithium market is hot and frothy and this is not something we deliberately tried to jump in on. However, our timing is, coincidentally, it's pretty good. I'm hedging a bit. We wanted to make sure that we're certain we had something, so we sent it out for umpire tests, a second set of tests, which confirmed it. It's only 10 samples right now, but yes, it's across a pretty good district. We've got geologists on the ground right now doing a proper, we'll call it a targeted sampling and mapping, looking for the lithium micas, which is where the lithium is found here. As you pointed out it's common in Europe, and the grades seem to be in line with others that have done studies and so forth on production of lithium out of micas.

Gerardo Del Real: When do you anticipate receiving some of the results from this early stage work? Because I think, again, I think it has the potential to be a significant discovery. I think it's going to be a fun story to follow here.

Chris Donaldson: Yeah, early days, but we're now, like I said, doing more extensive sampling and mapping, and it won't be long. The next few weeks we'll start getting those assays back and be able to get comment a little better on the size and the scale potential. Pretty happy about that. I'm certainly doing my research right now. When these first came in, the host rock is called the zinnwaldite, and I didn't even know what that was. It's kind of an obscure name that I hadn't heard before. Getting up to speed on that. We're getting a lot of interest from the Mineral Resources in Tasmania. We're quite excited about this potential. If you look actually in and around the area, there's been a couple of companies staking specifically for lithium in and around us. We think we're in the right area here. We just hope we can get the scale and potential that we think it could be.

Gerardo Del Real: The project is owned 100% by TinOne. It's a 9,600 heactare land package. You mentioned the rush that's going on to stake around you. I'm excited to get these results here soon, Chris, and really looking forward to having you back on here in the next several weeks.

Chris Donaldson: Yeah, I can't wait to update you as a story unfolds here.

Gerardo Del Real: Fantastic. A name change may be in the cards. We'll talk about that another time. Thanks again for your time, Chris. I appreciate it.

Chris Donaldson: Yeah, you too. Thanks so much. Take care.