Hard-drilling Battery Age Minerals (ASX:BM8) has had a busy year since re-listing on the ASX in February, with emerging discoveries at the flagship Falcon Lake lithium project in Ontario, Canada, stealing the limelight.

It rubs shoulders with other popular explorers in the region, including Rock Teck, Imagine Lithium, Ultra Lithium and Green Technology Metals’ (ASX:GT1) 9.9Mt @ 1.04% Li2O flagship Seymour Lake project.

Ontario’s Minister for Energy Todd Smith says with projects such as these the province is accelerating the development of transmission lines to support critical mineral developments in the northwest.

“We’re building a made-in-Ontario supply chain that’s connecting the province’s critical minerals and clean steel in the north, to automakers and battery manufacturers across Ontario,” Smith says.

“These three new transmission lines will power that vision, helping to electrify Algoma Steel’s conversion to electric arc furnace as well as new homes, critical mineral development, and other job creators in northeast and eastern Ontario.”

Recent drilling opened a 5km-long mineralised corridor that’s shown grades of up to 2.73% Li2O from previously unmapped regions at the Falcon Main zone.

The Falcon East zone in particular has “potential for scale”, with new drilling returning high-grade assays of up to 19.1m @ 1.34% Li2O.

Other notable intercepts at the new zone include 18.05m @ 1.02% Li2O from 11.95m and 27.45 @ 0.83% Li2O from 19.65m.

The zone is located immediately east of the Falcon Lake East prospect and was identified as part of a summer fieldwork campaign as being highly prospective outside of the mapped historical occurrences.

“We are very encouraged to see more strong lab results returned from Falcon East, which represents the first significant zone of spodumene mineralisation to be discovered at Falcon outside of the area of historic exploration,” BM8 managing director Gerard O’Donovan says.

“We have yet to fully test this area due to the short pause in drilling for the hunting season, but we look forward to recommencing work next week and further testing this zone to determine its full extent.

“The rig will be back spinning next week, and the team is excited to get back on the ground and further expand the potential of Falcon Lake.”

Drilling at Falcon East will recommence in the coming weeks following a short pause for hunting season to further define mineralisation extents and structural geometry of the newly discovered pegmatite.