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Africa-focused Lithic Metals and Energy hopes to establish an inferred nickel resource at Haito in Togo before October.

Managing director Jim Kerr says the AIM-quoted company (formerly Zambezi Nickel) recently completed the first airborne magnetic and radiometric survey of Haito, where United Nations-funded reconnaissance in the late 1990s reported encouraging nickel grades of more than one per cent over a wide area. London-based Lithic, which raised £4 million at 6.5p in November, has set itself a month to complete a study of Togo’s Pagala zinc deposit, previously a project of colossus Anglo American.

The company is also investigating uranium possibilities in Togo. Lithic is committed to spend £2.5 million over two years to earn 51 per cent of a 50-50 joint venture with Australia-based AIM counter Zambezi Resources to probe uranium licences in Zambia.

The company can up its share to 75 per cent by competing a definitive feasibility study of Zambia’s Oryx and Mvula East uranium targets. Trenching has begun at Oryx and Kerr says airborne surveys are ‘generating tons of new anomalies’.

Lithic is also involved in a joint venture with another mining giant, BHP Billiton, to probe nickel sulphide possibilities in Mozambique. Floated at 10p in 2005, the company’s shares have so far been disappointing, hitting 19.25p in 2006 before tumbling to 3.5p at the beginning of last year.

Now 5.62p, valuing the company at £8.5 million, their prospects hinge on the progress made in the coming months at Haito and Lithic’s other projects.

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