The Western Australia-based company is planning a development hub based around its flagship, high-grade Lake Throssell brine SOP project near Laverton.

Trigg is firmly focused on sustainability and MD and CEO Keren Paterson told RESOURCEStocks her aim was to build mines communities could be proud of.

The company is also looking to build on the pioneering spirit of its namesake.

It's named after Paterson's ancestor Henry Trigg, a carpenter who moved to WA's Swan River Colony in 1829 and became head of public works, overseeing key projects including building Canning Bridge.

"He was very energetic, very passionate about Western Australia and created things out of nothing," Paterson said.

She also loves her home state and made the move into the mining sector after finding abandoned mines during travels through the bush, thinking they were interesting but believing in a more environmentally-friendly future.

Her research led her to sulphate of potash, which provides essential nutrients to plants without any deleterious elements.

After diverse experience in the mining sector, Paterson founded Trigg and listed the company in 2019, with two SOP projects in the eastern Goldfields and strong support in the IPO from the agricultural sector.

In May, Trigg established an initial inferred resource for Lake Throssell, of 14.2 million tonnes at 10.3kg/m³ SOP, indicating the scale and grade to underpin long-term production.

It's now working to increase confidence in Lake Throssell by establishing a maiden indicated resource and delivering a scoping study by the end of this quarter.

After an oversubscribed rights issue that raised over A$3.4 million, the company is well funded to deliver on these milestones.

Lake Throssell's current resource takes the company's inventory to more than 20Mt of SOP, thanks to its existing resource comprising 6Mt at 5.08kg/m³ at Lake Rason to the south.

Trigg has also set an exploration target of a further 2.6-9.4Mt of SOP at Lake Throssell and Lake Yeo, 35km away, represents further expansion potential.

"We're anticipating Lake Throssell to be a multi-decade project with further growth in the pipeline with the additional lakes in the portfolio," Paterson said.

"And Lake Throssell is a very exciting project in its own right."

With environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors becoming prominent investment considerations, Paterson was quick to highlight the nature-friendly aspects of producing SOP from brine.

"There's no open pit or rock waste dump," she said of the contrast with traditional surface mining.

"It really is using nature, sustainably harvesting mineralised brine from the aquifers and capturing solar through the evaporation process to produce a natural mineral fertiliser essential for global food security.  to produce quite a natural mineral fertiliser for food.

"This process is environmentally sound, it's not interrupting the geology and water will continue to come in over time.

"It will be harvested using solar energy through the evaporation process and produce a very clean fertiliser for sustainable agricultural outcomes - that's very exciting, that closed circuit of sustainability and improving outcomes, especially here in Australia where we're still importing all our potassium needs."

The potash market is dominated by the cheaper, more commonly found muriate of potash (MOP), such as BHP's yet-to-be-developed Jansen deposit in Saskatchewan.

MOP can also be heat-treated using the Mannheim process to produce SOP, however the energy intensive process produces hydrochloric acid as a waste product, which Paterson said further highlighted the more environmentally-friendly and lower-cost nature of brine SOP production.

SOP has a niche as a premium mineral fertiliser for high-value, chloride-sensitive crops such as fruit, cocoa and coffee beans.

"It increases drought tolerance and helps plants become much more efficient with water uptake," Paterson said.

"With increasing climate change and drought issues, and the salinity of our soils … we need to be using smart fertilisers that are efficient and nutritious.

"Sulphate of potash is just a really good healthy fertiliser and the more we can use that instead of muriate across all of our agricultural sector, we can improve the sustainability of Australian and global agricultural output."

Global SOP demand of circa 7 million tonnes a year is said to be rising at 3% per annum thanks to a growing world population, a reduction in arable land and an increasing use of fertiliser.

Trigg's three projects - Lake Throssell, Lake Yeo and Lake Rason to the south, lie near the terminus of ancient river valleys, where brine solutions carrying potassium mineralisation have been concentrating for millions of years.

Despite the remote-looking location, it yields benefits including being situated in a mining-friendly jurisdiction, plus has access to infrastructure.

Trigg's Lake Throssell project is host to the Great Central Road, where an upgrade is underway to establish the Outback Highway as a reliable route across central Australia, linking Laverton to Winton in Queensland.

The project is also about 60km from a gas pipeline and less than 1,000km from the deep-water port of Esperance.

Trigg's progress puts it firmly among Western Australia's budding SOP sector, albeit at an earlier stage than the few nearing production.

In that respect, Paterson said it was "an absolute advantage coming second".

"I've been watching what my peers have been doing and absorbing a lot of that knowledge," she said.

"We're also bringing on board a number of staff who have worked in the peer group, so we can learn the lessons.

"There's no set playbook like if it was a gold deposit and we could just get things off the shelf and go about building a gold mine.

"Each project has a slightly different process flow sheet because we have slightly different brine chemistry - we're all learning as a new industry here in Australia."

Another advantage of Trigg's earlier-stage status is that it represents a ground floor investment opportunity in a new Australian growth industry.

"We've got all the upside or the growth story ahead of us," Paterson said.