The quest for critical minerals, necessary for powering the global shift towards renewable energy, is gaining momentum.
Leeuwin Metals Ltd (ASX:LM1) managing director Christopher Piggott believes lithium, and battery metals like it, are closer to home than we may think.
Leeuwin is in the process of taking a magnifying glass to brownfield and formerly explored project sites, reassessing them to look for critical minerals like lithium and nickel, elements that weren’t on the original explorers’ radars.
“Banks and institutions are looking positively on projects that are looking for those metals, so there’s a commercial outcome there, but it’s also a good thing to do, the right thing to do,” he said.
In this article:
- Perth born and bred
- Delving deeper: data paints the picture
- Fuelling global decarbonisation
Born and raised in Perth, Christopher Piggott has always seen mining as a bit of an adventure.
Not content to sit behind a desk, he gravitated toward a career that offers both great uncertainty, and great potential for success: Geology.
“The exciting part of the job is the possibility of making a discovery,” Piggott explains.
“There’s a lot of potential for wealth creation, not just for shareholders but for the broader community and the places you operate, giving people jobs and opportunities that didn’t exist previously.
“It’s risk-capital, you’re never really sure what the outcome will be, but when you manage to find an ore body you can have a really positive impact on a lot of people’s lives.
“That’s one of the cooler aspects of the job, the impact.”
Beginning his career at Gold Road Resources back in 2011, Piggott worked his way up through various Australian mining companies, participating in the Nova-Bollinger Project development and graduating to senior geologist with Bellevue Gold in 2019.
From there, he made the hop to the executive board to become Leeuwin Metal’s managing director just last year.
Piggott credits the excellent mining collaboration eco-system within Western Australia as a key element of his growth, allowing him to draw inspiration from numerous and varied successes.
“Success has a lot of different looks, and there’s something unique to each company,” he says.
“You don’t have to copy any one format; you can take the best things you’ve seen from the people you’ve looked up to and combine them to work for you.
“It goes back to how great Western Australia is as a mining region. You can walk down the street and bump into someone who’s done something really interesting, and most of the time, they’re pretty friendly and approachable!
“I feel very fortunate to have been born and bred in Perth in that regard.”
After dabbling in various geological disciplines above and beneath ground, Piggott seems to have found his niche in the battery metal hunt, specifically in brownfield mine and project sites ripe for critical mineral re-exploration.
Delving deeper: data paints the picture
When exploring brownfield and underexplored sites, you’ve got to follow the hints, connect the dots, says Piggott.
“Just because you think an area has been explored doesn't necessarily mean it's been explored for the commodities of today,” he explains.
“You need to be a bit of a Sherlock Holmes, a detective, as much as a scientist, sniffing out the clues and following the trail until you can put the bigger picture together.
“Our own Jenpeg Lithium Project is a great example of that.
“It’s an old project that was explored for tin-tantalum mineralisation in the 80s, but they didn’t assay for lithium – no one was looking for it back then.”
Leeuwin Metals currently holds two core projects in the Manitoba region of Canada: The Jenpeg Lithium Project, and the William Lake Nickel Project.
Hardrock or spodumene lithium commonly forms in geological structures called pegmatites, generally multi-element crystallised formations that take shape in the final stages of magma cooling into rock.
Lithium-prospective pegmatites are usually a combination of lithium, caesium and tantalum, the latter of which tends to form in close proximity to tin mineralisation.
“At Jenpeg we knew from historical logs that there was tin and tantalum mineralisation, we knew there was spodumene present, so everything was pointing to LCT (lithium-caesium-tantalum) pegmatite mineralisation, but we didn’t know the lithium content at the time,” Piggott says.
“Now, we know there are up to 20-metre-wide zones of mineralisation with comfortably more than 1% lithium content.”
Leeuwin intends to replicate that exploration success at William Lake, this time with nickel.
Importantly, both projects are a stone throw away from the Jenpeg Hydropower Station, which boasts six turbine generators and a capacity of 115 megawatts.
“Canada is a prime location and Manitoba specifically has definitely got a natural advantage; it’s got great geology of the Thompson Nickel belt, and the greenstone belts that extend across from Ontario, and on top of that, it’s got hydropower,” Piggott says.
“Access to renewable power offers potential for a lower carbon footprint, and it’s also geographically well placed in the centre of Canada, full access to markets, railways, all kinds of infrastructure – you can essentially take it anywhere in North America.”
Fuelling global decarbonisation
North America has quickly become a focal point of the battery metal rush.
While China dominated everything from mineral extraction to battery anode processing and electric vehicle manufacturing until very recently, in the last few years other nations have woken up to the reality of decarbonisation, and the necessity of onshore manufacturing for energy security purposes.
The Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act – which offered up some US$400 billion in spending and tax breaks – is likely to be just the first salvo in a structural repositioning of global economies on the battery manufacturing stage, pouring billions of dollars into creating integrated supply chains and building the infrastructure necessary to support them.
“We’re a participant in the decarbonisation effort,” Piggott points out.
“I think the world has recognised that we need more renewable energy, but I’m not sure if everyone’s clued in on just what the demand is going to require.
“Metals are required for this transition, and these metals need to come from somewhere.
BloombergNEF estimates the global transition to clean energy will require about US$10 trillion in battery metals through 2050, although some analysts fear there will simply not be enough to go around.
The high quality of minerals needed for EVs complicates the supply question further – analysts are predicting lithium shortages by 2025, and similarly dire predictions have been made for nickel, copper and cobalt.
“It’s up to companies like Leeuwin Metals to find those metals and meet that demand,” Piggot says.
“I think as an industry we need to communicate that better to broader society, and it’s up to us to do all of this in a responsible manner as well.”
Piggot believes Leeuwin is very well placed to accomplish that, based in a premier mining region with access to hydropower and a focus on the right minerals.
“We’re drilling at the William Lake Nickel Project, looking forward to hitting the ground running at our Jenpeg Lithium Project, and committed to spending money in the ground, delivering results and updating the market as they come to hand.”