Bégin-Lamarche is First Phosphate's wholly owned, royalty-free phosphate property northwest of Saguenay, comprising 173 contiguous exploration rights covering 9,689 ha, reduced from 688 rights covering 38,610 ha in the previous report. Its May 1, 2026 pit-constrained Mineral Resource at a 2.5% P2O5 cut-off remains open down-dip; Mineral Resources are not Mineral Reserves and have no demonstrated economic viability. Community-council authorization is required for exploration, logging, blasting and bulk sampling under the ATI process. The December 2024 PEA is preliminary and includes Inferred Resources. The 2025-2026 pilot program tested magnetic separation and apatite flotation, but the report cautions that surface material in the feed may make those tests less credible than the 2024 bench tests. Further zone-variability testing is recommended; saleable magnetite and ilmenite recovery has not been confirmed. The recommended CAD20.36 million exploration and feasibility work program excludes assembling a sufficiently large feed sample, and feasibility activities depend on prior exploration and drilling. The report’s July 13, 2026 exploration-permit inventory lists ATI-41 expiring June 4, 2027; ATI-299, ATI-300, ATI-301 and ATI-302 expiring January 28, 2028; and ATI-732 and ATI-733 expiring June 2, 2029. A mining lease is required for extraction.
- Country
- Canada
- Commodity
- Phosphate
- Stage
- PEA