TSX Venture posts marginal gain, May 14-18

The S&P/TSX Venture Composite Index rose 0.45% to 786.9 over the trading period.

Shares of Millennial Lithium increased 57¢ to $2.70 on news the junior has hired Peter Ehren, an expert on lithium brines and evaporative processes. Ehren has worked in lithium basins around the world, most recently at Orocobre’s producing Salar de Olaroz in Argentina. Ehren was also part of SQM’s team of evaporation technology experts at Salar de Atacama in Chile, one of the world’s richest lithium deposits. A preliminary economic assessment (PEA) of Millennial Lithium’s flagship project, Pastos Grandes, in Argentina, envisioned production of 25,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate a year over a 25-year mine life. The study estimated an US$824-million, after-tax net present value at an 8% discount rate and a 23.4% internal rate of return. Capex was estimated at US$410 million. The company is proceeding with a feasibility study and says the project could produce within two years.

Metallurgical tests from the Macmillan Pass project in the Yukon sent Fireweed Zinc up 49¢ to $2.04 per share. The test work, part of an upcoming PEA, shows the project can produce zinc and lead concentrates desirable to potential traders and global smelter customers, Fireweed says. The results showed a global composite zinc concentrate grading 58% zinc at an 89% zinc recovery, and lead concentrate containing 61% lead at 75% lead recovery. Fireweed’s wholly owned project, 200 km northeast of the community of Ross River, hosts the Tom and Jason zinc-lead-silver deposits. The project has indicated resources of 11.21 million tonnes grading 6.59% zinc, 2.48% lead and 21.33 grams silver per tonne (9.61% zinc equivalent). Inferred resources add 39.47 million tonnes grading 5.84% zinc, 3.14% lead and 38.15 grams silver (10% zinc equivalent).

Desert Lion Energy’s shares gained 18¢ to finish at $1.26. The company announced that it can build its phase-one flotation plant — capable of processing between 350,000 tonnes and 400,000 tonnes of feed per year — for just $7 million, which would make it the “lowest, capital cost-intensity plant amongst hard-rock lithium peers.” The plant will help the lithium developer generate cash and de-risk the project, which has lithium-bearing, pegmatitic mineralization. It will also help process fines from historic run-of-mine stockpiles at the Rubicon and Helikon mines as part of a three-phase plan. The second phase will involve large-scale mining and concentrate production from in-situ material to produce 250,000 to 300,000 tonnes per year of concentrate. In the third phase, the company will produce 25,000 tonnes per year of lithium carbonate. Desert Lion hopes to build Namibia’s first large-scale lithium mine. The project is located 210 km from Windhoek, the nation’s capital. TNM