Berkeley Energia Posts Maiden MRE for Conchas Critical Minerals Project

Berkeley Energia (ASX: BKY) has announced a maiden mineral resource estimate (MRE) for its wholly owned Conchas critical minerals project in Spain.

The inferred resource sits at 11.8 million tonnes grading 0.41% lithium oxide and 0.21% rubidium oxide for a total of 49,000t contained lithium and 25,200t contained rubidium.

This includes accessory amounts of tin, caesium, beryllium, niobium, and tantalum hosted within a muscovitic leucogranite unit and remains open at depth, supporting potential resource growth.

Berkeley considers the MRE to be amenable to bulk tonnage and open-pit mining, with preliminary metallurgical testing demonstrating strong recoveries of lithium and rubidium at acceptable grades using flotation and magnetic separation.

Conchas IP Location

The Conchas Investigation Permit (Conchas IP) covers 31 square kilometres of the southwest Salamanca province, in what is known as the Central Iberian Zone—one of the most important and extensive geological areas of the Iberian Peninsula.

Since 2021, Berkeley has completed systematic exploration on the Conchas IP including soil sampling, geological mapping, geophysics, and drilling over two campaigns in 2022 and 2024 that provided subsurface data to feed into the evaluation of mineral resources.

Those two drilling programs—five reverse circulation holes for 282 metres in 2022, then 33 RC and three diamond holes for a combined 2,087m in 2024—showed that mineralised vertical thicknesses range from 8m to 45m over southern and central portions of the deposit, and as much as 70m to the north.

Data collected to date supports the theory of a multi-feeder system creating and controlling the spatial position and thickness of the Conchas mineralised bodies.

Strategic Global Importance

Berkeley executive director Robert Behets said the presence of rubidium and lithium highlight the potential strategic importance of Conchas.

“The MRE milestone follows two successful drilling campaigns and a positive initial assessment of the metallurgical characteristics of the multi-commodity mineralisation at Conchas that confirmed very good recoveries of lithium and rubidium can be achieved using flotation and magnetic separation methods,” he said.

“We will continue to systematically advance the project’s development with additional infill drilling to increase the resource classification ,and a second phase of metallurgical test work to optimise the flotation and magnetic separation processes.”

Rubidium is a critical raw material classified as a critical mineral by the US and Japan due to its strategic importance and growing demand in high-tech applications across a number of key sectors.

Lithium is designated as both a critical and strategic material for the European Union as batteries remain central to decarbonisation, energy security, and industrial competitiveness.