By: OrePulse

Lithium Africa Corp, listed on the TSX Venture Exchange, said it will advance its Springbok lithium project in South Africa's Northern Cape province toward commercial production of spodumene concentrate, with an initial output target in the second half of 2027.

The company had been weighing whether to sell its existing stockpile of previously mined pegmatite from the Norrabees I deposit as direct-shipping ore, sending the unprocessed material straight to buyers. It has decided instead to run that stockpile, together with newly mined pegmatite, through an on-site dense media separation plant that would upgrade the ore into a higher-grade concentrate before sale.

The decision followed an independent, third-party review of two-stage dense media separation testwork carried out on a 13-tonne bulk sample taken from the stockpile. Dense media separation is a gravity-based processing method that sorts ore by density to concentrate the valuable mineral and strip out waste rock before the material is sold. Lithium Africa said the testwork results pointed to that route as the more effective way to process the material, compared with shipping it unprocessed as direct-shipping ore.

Mining at Norrabees I already holds the regulatory approval it needs. The dense media separation plant itself still requires additional permits, and the company said it has begun that approval process.

Lithium Africa is targeting an initial mineral resource estimate for the first half of 2027, to be followed by a preliminary economic assessment of the project. Early drilling at Norrabees I returned intervals of up to 7.5 meters grading 1.97% lithium oxide, with individual sample results as high as 4.11% lithium oxide. The company said the true widths of those intervals are not yet known.

Separately, Lithium Africa is in early-stage, non-binding talks with potential financing partners and is targeting a financing decision in the first half of 2027, timed to coincide with the resource estimate and economic assessment work. The company said it expects cash flow from the planned dense media separation operation to help fund further exploration both at Springbok and across its broader portfolio of project interests in Africa.

Chief executive Thomas Benson said the approach was designed to generate value for shareholders without diluting their equity stakes, while supporting economic development in the Northern Cape region, where the project is located.

The Springbok project is centered on the Norrabees I deposit, where Lithium Africa holds the mining rights. The company has not disclosed a cost estimate for the planned dense media separation plant, and it described its talks with prospective financing partners as preliminary without giving further detail on their status.

The sequencing laid out by Lithium Africa ties the three workstreams together: the mineral resource estimate and preliminary economic assessment are due in the first half of 2027, the financing decision is targeted for the same period, and first production of spodumene concentrate is targeted for the second half of that year. Spodumene concentrate is a processed form of lithium-bearing ore that is typically sold onward to converters for use in battery-grade lithium chemicals.