The Latin Resources Ltd (ASX: LRS) share price has been a very strong performer on Wednesday morning.
At one stage, the Latin America-focused lithium explorer's shares were up as much as 28% to a 52-week high of 9.7 cents.
The Latin Resources share price has since pulled back but remains up 18% to 9 cents at the time of writing.
Why is the Latin Resources share price rocketing higher?
Investors have been bidding the Latin Resources share price higher today following the release of a drilling update.
According to the release, the first assay results from drilling at the Salinas Lithium Project in Brazil have confirmed spodumene rich pegmatites that contain high-grade lithium, with a peak grade of 3.22% Li2O returned from one sample.
Management notes that these positive assay results are supporting its view that there's potential for a new, high-grade lithium discovery. Particularly given that the assay results from the sampled pegmatite zones in the first two diamond holes show that the two main logged pegmatites both contain significant lithium.
The company is now looking forward to receiving more assay results in the coming weeks.
Potential 'major new lithium discovery'
Latin Resources' managing director, Chris Gale, was very pleased with the drilling results, highlighting that the level of grade is unusually high. He commented:
"These assay results from the first two holes drilled in the South Target area of the Salinas Lithium Project, are extremely pleasing, confirming that the intersected pegmatites contain significant high-grade lithium. These results continue to give us confidence that we may be onto a potentially major new lithium discovery in one of the best mining jurisdictions in the world.
Lithium grades over two percent are not common, with most operations in Australia running between one to one and a half percent lithium. Our pegmatite Peg_2 is running grades of around two percent lithium, with a peak of over three percent over one meter, which are very high.
The team on the ground will now focus the drilling on these much thicker pegmatites to the south to infill our existing sections and extend our drill coverage to the southwest where the pegmatites remain open. These assay results are only for the first two holes, we have another four holes that had thicker intersections with abundant spodumene as well. We are eagerly awaiting further assay results for these holes, which we expect to come through over the next few weeks."
