Lithium exploration company Patriot Battery Metals will no longer pursue a downstream lithium processing partnership with shareholder Albemarle, it was announced on Wednesday.

Patriot, which owns the Corvette property in Canada, said that a nine-month term of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Albemarle had concluded without extension and that the rights granted to the lithium major had expired.

In terms of the MoU, the parties investigated opportunities for a downstream lithium hydroxide plant integrated with the Corvette property and located in Canada or the US, including options in the province of Quebec.

Patriot would now engage with other downstream companies.

“As the scale and quality of the Corvette project has become increasingly evident, the company has received significant interest from participants in the lithium industry, given the potential for Corvette to be a large and high-quality raw material supplier for the future of lithium-ion battery supply chains ex-China,” the Ken Brinsden-led explorer stated.

Since signing the MoU, Albemarle and Patriot have worked together on the many technical aspects of an integrated project, advancing the scope of mine concentrate production and opportunities for a downstream lithium hydroxide plant integrated with the Corvette project.

Further, the C$109-million in funding provided by Albemarle's strategic investment enabled a robust work programme, including installation of critical capital works such as the camp, all-weather access road and the recently completed 11-rig winter drill programme.

"Our collaboration with Albemarle has been extremely valuable. We are proud of the progress we've made and are excited by the intense market interest in the Corvette project,” said Brinsden.

The CV lithium trend is an emerging spodumene pegmatite district discovered by the company in 2017 and is interpreted to span more than 50 km across the Corvette property. The core area includes the approximately 4.6-km-long CV5 spodumene pegmatite, which hosts a maiden mineral resource estimate of 109.2-million tonnes at 1.42% lithium oxide inferred.

To date, eight distinct clusters of lithium pegmatite have been discovered across the property – CV4, CV5, CV8, CV9, CV10, CV12, CV13, and the recently discovered CV14. Given the proximity of some pegmatite outcrops to each other, as well as the shallow till cover in the area, it is probable that some of the outcrops may reflect a discontinuous surface exposure of a single, larger pegmatite "outcrop" subsurface.