Chamwe Kaira
Critical minerals producer Andrada Mining has expanded its drilling programme at the Lithium Ridge project in the Erongo Region after reporting strong lithium results.
The company released a second batch of diamond drilling results, confirming high-grade lithium oxide intersections across several drill holes. It also found tin and tantalum in all reported holes.
Among the key results, drill hole LRD031 returned 21.33 metres grading 1.24% lithium oxide, including 7.20 metres at 1.99%. Another hole, LRD025, returned 16.24 metres at 1.04% lithium oxide from near the surface, while LRD022 delivered 10.87 metres at 1.38%.
These results build on an earlier batch released in February, where the company reported lithium mineralisation from the surface down to about 160 metres, with grades of up to 3.02% lithium oxide in selected intervals.
Andrada said the consistent grades and widths across multiple drill holes are increasing confidence that Lithium Ridge could become a large-scale mineral deposit.
Following the results, the company increased its Stage 1 drilling programme by about 18%, bringing the total planned drilling to 16,500 metres. The work is funded through its exploration partnership with SQM.
Andrada chief executive officer Anthony Viljoen said the new results continue to improve the company’s understanding of the pegmatite system at Lithium Ridge.
He said the combination of good grades and growing scale was highly encouraging and had prompted the company to extend drilling in order to speed up the project’s development.
Viljoen added that Lithium Ridge is shaping up to become an important part of Andrada’s wider critical minerals portfolio in Namibia, especially because the project also contains tin and tantalum that could improve future project value.
Lithium Ridge is located near the company’s producing Uis mine in the Erongo Region, where Andrada is already mining tin and expanding into battery and technology minerals.
