The Lake Resources N.L. (ASX: LKE) share price is rocketing higher on Monday.
In morning trade, the lithium developer's shares are up 19% to 53 cents.
Why is the Lake Resources share price rocketing higher?
Investors have been scrambling to buy the company's shares this morning after it announced a major milestone with its Kachi operation in Argentina.
According to the release, independent testing of lithium carbonate produced from Kachi has confirmed grades and purity greater than 99.8%.
Management believes this points to Kachi being a world-class lithium development project that is poised to lead the industry in the production of high-quality lithium with minimal environmental footprint.
What were the tests?
The release notes that the test was performed by Saltworks with independent analysis by two third party labs.
Lake highlights that the test validates the major commercial process systems for the Kachi Project and confirms its ability to produce high-quality, battery-grade lithium carbonate from its brine resource using Lilac DLE technology.
There have been some major doubts over the ability of this technology. In fact, one short seller was targeting the company on the belief that the technology was going to cause significant environment waste.
However, Lake has revealed that it has achieved its results in an environmentally friendly manner.
Furthermore, the quality of the lithium carbonate product from the Saltworks test exceeds the project design specification and the battery grade specifications of major South American brine lithium producers.
Lake's CEO, David Dickson, said:
This is a new process that has now been proven to produce high grade lithium in our 'mining and refining' facility– this means a critical part of the value adding chain is being captured by Lake. It also sets a new standard for what it means to be a responsible member of the lithium supply chain.
Despite today's strong gain, the Lake Resources share price is down by a third in 2023.
