CleanTech Lithium has executed two option agreements giving it the irrevocable and exclusive right to acquire 100 percent of the Genoveva and Sal de Litio 1 mining properties in the southern Salar de Antofalla, Catamarca Province, Argentina, the AIM-listed company announced October 8. The ground sits about 80 kilometres from CleanTech’s flagship Laguna Verde project in Chile and directly adjacent to an Albemarle exploration project the major estimates at 9.5 million tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent.
The payment schedule totals US$1.93 million: US$525,000 over the first year, funded from existing cash, and a further US$1.4 million between October 2027 and May 2031. CleanTech plans a drill program in 2027 costing roughly US$500,000, targeting a maiden JORC-compliant resource estimate, though both the program and the estimate are explicitly subject to available funding. Argentine drill permitting takes about six months, and the company notes the salar’s 3,350-metre elevation still permits year-round exploration.
The geological thesis leans on the neighbor: vertical electrical sounding geophysics completed on Genoveva by the current owner indicates a conductive brine target extending to the 600-metre profile depth, which CleanTech reads as a >500-metre brine aquifer. CEO Ignacio Mehech, who was Albemarle’s vice president of external affairs for Latin America from 2021 to early 2024 with direct involvement in the adjacent project, argues the three projects, Laguna Verde, Viento Andino and Antofalla, could share a centralized conversion facility in Copiapo. Albemarle’s cited resource uses a 406 mg/L measured-and-indicated grade and a 5.323 lithium-to-LCE conversion per its 2025 SEC filing, as CleanTech’s own announcement discloses.
Context matters on stage. This is an option on exploration ground with no resource, no feasibility work and no opex or capex framework; it advances CleanTech’s district-scale narrative but changes nothing about Laguna Verde, where the company has agreed CEOL contract terms with Chile’s Mining Ministry subject to final ratification and this week reported lithium carbonate purity up to 99.75% with DLE performance above pre-feasibility benchmarks. Shares rose 4.1% to 7.03 pence in London on the announcement. For a company valued at a micro-cap level, a US$1.93 million staged entry is the right size of bet; the honest read is that Antofalla is 2027-funded drilling away from meaning anything, and the market should track whether that funding materializes before crediting any district premium.