Market cap now $200 million
“Delta is one of the few ASX-listed juniors with a JORC-compliant resource under its belt at its Mt Ida lithium project, about 100km northwest of Menzies.
“At 12.7Mt grading 1.2% lithium, it is bigger than Essential’s 11.2Mt grading 1.16% lithium at Pioneer Dome, 130km south of Kalgoorlie.
“Delta has the bigger market cap of the two, mainly because Mt Ida is more advanced, and because Delta also owns the exciting but early stage Yinnetharra pegmatite field inland from Carnarvon.
“As mentioned by Garimpeiro on 11 Feb, the company is one of the last “independent’’ smaller lithium players left with a real project on its hand, and an exciting exploration project to boot.
“Given the activity amongst the lithium majors to secure future additional supply sources as pointed out earlier, Delta could sit back and wait for offers of takeovers/strategic alliances and so on.
“But under .. executive chairman David Flanagan, the plan is force a re-rating of the stock by getting Mt Ida into production by the end of the year, as well as confirming the upside potential of Yinnetharra.
“We will start out with a relatively small operation with a hired mining fleet and crushing plant. We will be taking the top ore body off to produce a direct shipping ore product (1-1.2% lithium) as a precursor to building a concentrate plant (6% lithium),’’ Flanagan told Garimpeiro in February.
Delta raised $55m recently.