PUR increases exploration upside on Argentina lithium project by 4.4x

Our Investment Pursuit Minerals (ASX: PUR) just added 4.4x more scale to the exploration upside on its lithium project in Argentina.

PUR owns the Rio Grande Sur Lithium Project located in the Salta province, Argentina and already has a 1.26Mt Lithium Carbonate Equivalent (LCE) at grades of ~424mg/L Li JORC resource.

The project sits in the Rio Grande Salar - next to established lithium players such as Ganfeng, SQM, Albermale, Lithium Argentina plus Rio Tinto and Argosy minerals.

PUR drilled the asset back in 2024 and defined the current resource estimate.

A big part of the reason we liked the asset was for the exploration upside to the north - slightly off the salar.

That ground here is actually a much larger area then the ground inside the salar and PUR’s theory has always been that the brine units extend outside of the visible at surface margins of the salar.

(The red sections in the image below are showing that theory as a visual):

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Today, PUR reprocessed some geophysics from the project and now has a theory that the brine units extend down to depths of ~1.1km (instead of previously interpreting extensions down to ~250m).

So the exploration upside on this ground is now 4.4X more…

PUR’s plan is to drill three priority holes (for a total of ~3,200m) across that area - so 3x ~1,000m holes to see if PUR’s exploration model is correct.

PUR expects to have rigs mobilised in late April with drilling to start shortly after.

PUR’s project already has a PFS completed for a 5,000tpa operation based on the current resource which returned:

• NPV of US$364M, increasing to US$601 with a 30% lift in lithium prices
• Stage 1 capital requirement of US$135M
• Stage 1 operating costs of US$6,500, in the lowest quartile of the cost curve
• 25 year mine life

IF PUR can define a giant resource on the Mito ground then we think the size/scale of its lithium project could be completely transformed.

See our deep dive on the PFS here.

Again here is the size difference between everything we know already about PUR’s project and the ground today’s announcement is related to:

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Someone else has drilled that salar margin theory before

If we look closely at that image from PUR’s announcement today, there is actually a small dot on the map where one of PUR’s neighbours (NOA Lithium) drilled back in 2023:

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NOA actually hit some of their highest grades in that hole (which to us is a good sign the brine extensions to the north theory may actually be right):

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We are hoping PUR can replicate (and improve on) the NOA result.

What we want to see next from PUR

PUR recently put out an investor presentation which summarises the story really well.

Check out the full presentation here.

Here are the two key milestones we are looking forward to seeing the most:

• Target generation on gold-silver project in Argentina - we want to see PUR sample and map its gold-silver project to define targets for drilling later in the year.
• Drilling on lithium project in Argentina - after today’s announcement, we want to see PUR drill that Mito block to the north of its existing resource (the big swing for the fences exploration hole)

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