Chilean state-owned miner Enami has announced that an early exploration campaign for its Salares Altoandinos lithium project has shown promising results. The project is located in the country’s northern salt flats.
According to preliminary data, the Aguilar salt flat, more than 1,000 km (620 miles) north of the capital Santiago, could have an average lithium concentration of 740 milligrams per liter, with as much as 984 mg/l in some areas. Enami’s executive vice president, Ivan Mlynarz, described the results as “encouraging” and said that technical advances had allowed for important developments that represented “important competitive advantages for investors interested in being part of the initiative.”
With an initial investment of $10.5 million, Enami has set up its basic exploration campaign for the Aguilar, La Isla, and Grande salt flats from a camp in the Atacama mountains. The company has also begun testing direct lithium extraction, a technique that uses less water and has a higher recovery rate from brine, to extract saleable forms of lithium.
The initial campaign is set to establish what lithium resources and reserves are available at these deposits. Enami expects to start building the production facilities by 2030.
Chile is the world’s second-biggest lithium producer after Australia, and together with its South American neighbors Argentina and Bolivia, known as the “lithium triangle,” they are estimated to hold more than half the world’s lithium resources.