It comes after the company signed a native title agreement with traditional owners, the Njamal People, last week.

Access agreements have also been signed with pastoral lease holders for access to mine and infrastructure areas, as well as with local rail operators for road access rights near rail corridors.

The granting of the mining lease paves the way for construction to begin early next year for first production by the end of 2017.

Earthworks for the construction of the accommodation village kicked off last month.

Pilbara has appointed lithium flotation expert Dr Wenbo Wang to its project team from mid-January.

Wang most recently worked at Talison Lithium’s Greenbushes mine, and was involved in the commissioning and optimisation of a new lithium processing plant.

“Securing someone of Wenbo’s experience and stature in Australia’s lithium industry is a fantastic win for Pilbara, and places our already outstanding project front and centre for the next generation of large-scale and high quality spodumene production assets,” Pilbara managing director Ken Brinsden said.

“His skills combined with the existing team at Pilbara makes for a formidable process plant operating team.”

Pilbara was due to announce a pre-Christmas Pilgangoora resource upgrade, but said it was delayed for around two weeks by additional drilling success at the Far East prospect.

The most recent results from Far East included 13m at 1.61% lithium oxide from 96m; and 5m at 1.87% from 104m.

Pilbara has completed more than 80,000m of drilling at Pilgangoora in the past two years, growing the resource to 128.6 million tonnes at 1.22% lithium oxide for 1.57Mt of contained lithium.

The company is also due to wrap up financing early in the new year.

Shares in Pilbara fell by 0.8c to 50.7c.