Stewart Bailey is joining the company as study manager for the Mavis Lake project while Brady Jenkins comes aboard as principal process engineer.

Mr. Bailey, an engineer, has more than a decade of experience in greenfield and brownfield mine site project design.

He was previously the senior engineer of mechanical packages on the Mt Holland lithium project in Western Australia for Covalent Lithium.

Covalent, an unlisted company, is the manager at Mt Holland which is co-owned by SQM of Chile and Wesfarmers (ASX: WES).

Mr Jenkins was previously the processing superintendent at Altura Mining’s (ASX: AJM) Pilgangoora lithium project.

Critical Resources says he has “significant” experience with hard rock lithium processing across a range of international lithium deposits.

The company notes that these appointments bring in many years of expertise in hard rock lithium studies and project development, as well as in project delivery and metallurgical processing.

Managing director Alex Cheeseman worked closely with both men at Altura Mining.

“At a time when the North American automotive industry is projecting lithium demand growth well beyond the forecast supply, this is the perfect time to be getting behind a project and a team with a proven ability to deliver material to the market,” he added.

Extension drilling continues at Mavis Lake

Critical Resources says it intends to advance Mavis Lake with resource extension drilling in progress in parallel with grassroots exploration to define and refine further drill target selection.

Drilling is now focused on the Swell Zone where there have been intersections of spodumene bearing pegmatites of “significant” width.

Field work is continuing at the Gullwing, Tot and Little Wing pegmatite prospects, this work is aimed at defining drill targets.

In 2022 the company completed more than 19,500 metres of drilling.

Earlier this year, it released a maiden inferred mineral resource estimate for Mavis Lake of 8 million tonnes at 1.07% lithium oxide.

Critical Resources holds a number of lithium prospects across Ontario, Canada, including Mavis Lake, Graphic Lake, Plaid and Whiteloon Lake.

The company’s other projects include copper in Oman, and a base metals project in Halls Peak, NSW.