The Sayona Mining Ltd (ASX: SYA) share price is on the move on Monday morning.
At the time of writing, the lithium miner's shares are up 5% to 20.5 cents.
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Why is the Sayona Mining share price pushing higher?
Investors have been bidding the Sayona Mining share price higher today after the company released an update on its Canadian operations.
According to the release, the company has significantly expanded its Canadian lithium resource base, with an initial JORC mineral resource estimate for its Moblan Lithium Project. This project is owned 60:40 with Soquem.
Sayona estimates that the project has a total JORC measured, indicated and inferred resource of 70.9 million tonnes @ 1.15% Li20, which represents one of North America's single largest lithium resources.
Another positive is that this includes higher grade tonnage opportunities with measured, indicated and inferred resource of 51.4 million tonnes @ 1.31% Li20.
More to come
The company also aims to further enhance the size and grade of this resource through additional drilling, with 60,000m of extra drilling planned.
In addition, it highlights that opportunities exist to expand and build the mineral resources proximal to the known Moblan and Moleon deposits. In these areas exploration has indicated that lithium mineralisation may extend to the north, northeast and at depth.
Management believes further diamond drilling could potentially upgrade some of the inferred mineral resources to the indicated category and identify additional mineral resources down-plunge and in the vicinity of the currently identified mineralisation, including extra drilling between the Main/Inter and Moleon dyke groups.
Sayona's Managing Director, Brett Lynch, commented:
Speed and tonnes are crucial and with our North American Lithium operation in production, we are now bringing significant added resources to the market. Moblan now represents one of the single largest lithium resources in North America, justifying our move to fast-track a major drilling program that has delivered a resource within just a year of acquisition.
Sayona already has the leading advanced lithium resource base in North America and this latest expansion further entrenches our competitive advantage, particularly given our projects' favourable access to infrastructure, market proximity and availability of low-cost, sustainable hydropower.
Together with our established Abitibi lithium hub in the south, Sayona has quickly developed two emerging centres of lithium production amid surging demand from North America's EV and battery revolution. As we progress these projects from spodumene concentrate production towards downstream processing, the significance of these assets will only increase as the market scrambles for supply.
