Sovereign Metals Limited announced the results of graphite testwork completed at multiple independent laboratories in Australia, Canada and South Africa. Graphite flotation and cleaning testwork was conducted on graphite circuit feed from Sovereign's Kasiya Rutile-Graphite Project (Kasiya or Project) at four different laboratories, which all successfully produced high-grade graphite concentrate (94.9%-97.8% TGC) at high flotation recoveries (91.2%-97.2%). The testwork demonstrated excellent results using a conventional flowsheet that was consistent across all laboratories, thus confirming Sovereign's ability to produce a high quality graphite concentrate.

The graphite feed grades of 3.5%-4.0% TGC to the graphite circuit are significantly higher than the Mineral Resource Grade of 1.44%, highlighting the approximately 2.4-2.8-fold upgrading of graphite grades when ROM ore passes through the front-end rutile gravity separation circuit. This demonstrates the ease of separating the rutile heavy mineral and graphite streams from the front end of the Kasiya Pre-feasibility Study process flowsheet. Subsequently, the two product streams pass into distinct, industry-standard, final product flowsheets.

This further highlights the commercial benefits of having both rutile and graphite mineralisation co-existent in the same soft saprolite-hosted orebody. The first stage of upgrading the graphite feed, rougher flotation, achieved very high rejection (>90%) of waste materials to rougher tails, producing a rougher concentrate with more than 55% TGC and very high recoveries (94%-98%) in laboratory scale testing consistently across all four laboratories. Upgrading the graphite feed at very high recoveries and rejection of non-graphitic minerals without run-of-mine milling is another of Kasiya's significant advantages, supporting the lowest cost graphite production.

The rougher concentrate was further upgraded through laboratory scale flotation, cleaning and polishing stages, producing high-grade concentrates at high graphite circuit recoveries. Pilot-scale testwork confirmed the laboratory-scale results with >90% TGC recovery to high-grade graphite concentrates (<180-micron concentrate at 96.9% TGC and >180-micron concentrate at 97.2% TGC). Kasiya concentrates have very low levels of sulphur.

Sulphur can be difficult to remove in the purification processes required to produce anode materials. Other major impurities important for anode material purification processes are iron (Fe), silicon (Si) and aluminium (Al). The Kasiya material has exceptionally low levels of all of these impurities.

Benchmarked against the Chinese Standard (China dominates the supply of graphite for battery anodes) this could potentially lead to significant commercial advantages during purification and Kasiya's potential as a long term secure source of graphite ex-China. Kasiya concentrate has been sent for downstream testwork at respected graphite consultancy ProGraphite to produce and characterise CSPG active anode material for lithium-ion batteries. ProGraphite is conducting shaping, purification, and coating testwork to produce CSPG and evaluate the electrochemical performance of Kasiya CSPG.

This will provide baseline data for further optimisation and engagement with off-takers. Initial outcomes of this test work are expected to be released in the coming weeks.