First Phosphate Corp., Vancouver, B.C., on Jan. 31announced that it will undertake a 25,000-meter drill program at its Bégin-Lamarche Project in Quebec. The drilling program follows the company’s recent financing that raised gross proceeds of $8.2 million and is intended to lead to a maiden NI 43-101 compliant resource estimate, followed by a Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA). The company announced the completion of its third tranche of financing on Jan. 19.
The company announced on Jan. 29 that it has confirmed a new high-grade discovery 500 meters from the existing northern zone of its Bégin-Lamarche Project. The original discovery of these areas was made in the fall of 2022 during a prospection campaign and was confirmed last fall with 26 grab samples returning high-grade P2O5.
First Phosphate said the Larouche area continues to return high-grade analyses, with one sample grading as high as 39.45% P2O5 in an irregular layer of pure apatite. It said at this level of purity, the mineral would be considered direct shipping ore (DSO).
The company announced on Jan. 25 that it has entered into a multi-party Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with American Battery Factory Inc. (ABF) of Utah and technology provider Integrals Power Ltd. (IPL) of Milton Keynes, UK, to produce lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cathode active material (CAM) and LFP battery cells in North America.
The initiative LFP Project America is to support ABF’s eventual need for up to 40,000 mt/y of fully localized LFP CAM for LFP battery cell production in North America by 2028. LFP Project America aims to eventually localize the entire production supply chain of LFP CAM, LFF battery cells storage devices for the battery storage sector, to North America.