AUSTRALIAN miner, Prospect Resources Ltd, has begun to monetise its Step Aside Lithium project while also shifting focus to producing gold in the last quarter, the company has said.
In October last year, Prospect halted exploration efforts at its Bikita Gem and Step Aside Lithium Projects, as the former yielded few results, while the latter was being prepped for sale.
Since selling its Arcadia Lithium Mine to Chinese firm, Huayou Cobalt for US$378 million in 2022, Prospect began exploring lithium at its Bikita Gem and Step Aside Lithium projects.
The Bikita Gem Lithium project is located within the Masvingo Greenstone Belt in southeastern Zimbabwe, situated 5 kilometres (km) to the northwest of Bikita Lithium Mine operated by China’s Sinomine Resource Group.
The Step Aside Lithium Project is located 35km from Harare (and approximately 8km north of the Arcadia Lithium Mine project). It comprises approximately 100 hectares of claim within the Harare Greenstone Belt.
“Exploration activities at Step Aside have ceased and expenditure has been pared back to minimum holding commitments. Prospect has instigated a process to potentially monetise this lithium asset in 2025,” Prospect said in its quarterly activities report for the period ended March 31, 2025.
“A digital Data Room was prepared with all supporting technical, logistical and legal documentation pertaining to Step Aside collated specifically for this purpose. A sales process for Step Aside was re-launched in the March 2025 quarter, with Nurture Investments being contracted to complete this work.”
The company said that it had also re-examined diamond drill core from the project for its gold potential from February to March. It said suitable core intersections with visual prospectivity for gold mineralisation have since been submitted for analysis.
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“Step Aside lies within the Harare Greenstone Belt, which has historically produced over 35 tonnes of gold at very high gold grades, principally from the Arcturus group of mines, located 12km southwest of Step Aside and in similar rock sequences,” Prospect said.
The miner held 90% of Eagle Lithium at the end of the quarter.
Zimbabwe is estimated to have 13 million tonnes of gold reserves lying in the ground worth US$65 trillion, according to a research by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe.
