Premier Africa starts diamond drilling at Fort Rixon

AIM-listed Premier African Minerals says it has received encouraging results from its 2 500 m drilling programme at the Zulu lithium project in Fort Rixon, Zimbabwe.

The first diamond core hole intersected 9.5 m of visual spodumene petalite lithium mineralisation, from a down hole depth of 10.5 m.

CEO George Roach said yesterday that the intersection of visible hard rock lithium mineralisation was "most encouraging".

Core would now be transported to Premier's in-house sample preparation facilities for logging, splitting and sample preparation and then sent to SGS South Africa for multi-element analysis.

"This is a positive early validation of our geological modelling and I look forward to reporting the lithium assays as soon as they become available," Roach added.

Premier is drilling a series of 20 diamond drill holes designed to test for strike and depth extensions at Zulu, which currently has a strike length of 3.5 km.

In addition, the drilling programme is designed to establish a maiden resource.

Premier African Minerals Limited (AIM: PREM) is a multi-commodity mining and resource development company focused in Southern and Western Africa with production started at its flagship RHA project in the Hwange area in Zimbabwe.

The company has a diverse portfolio of projects, which includes tungsten, rare earth elements, gold, lithium and tantalum in Zimbabwe and Benin, encompassing brownfield projects with near-term production potential to grass-roots exploration.

It also holds two million shares in Circum Minerals Limited ("Circum"), the owners of the Danakil Potash Project in Ethiopia, which has the potential to be a world class asset.

At present those shares are valued at S$4 million based on the latest price at which circum has accepted subscriptions.