Australian lithium producer,
Just three and half months after announcing a Final Investment Decision for the restart, first ore has now been fed into the plant in support of near-term concentrate production.
Commissioning of the coarse production circuit at the Ngungaju Plant is now underway, as
Commissioning at Ngungaju follows a successful construction and maintenance acceleration program to bring-forward additional production and realise additional sales opportunities.
This is the first step of a staged recommissioning for the Ngungaju operation, with the fines spodumene processing circuit expected to commence production within the
Annual production capacity of approximately 180,000 to 200,000 dmt is expected from the Ngungaju plant following completion of ramp up from mid-2022 onward, complementing existing production capacity from the adjacent Pilgan Plant (330,000tpa increasing to 360-380,000tpa following completion of improvement works).
Additional production from Ngungaju will allow further sales into the emerging spot market for spodumene concentrate including on the recently launched BMX digital sales platform.
FY2022 production guidance across the entire
'This is a great result, which marks the culmination of the incredible hard work which our entire team has put in to transform the amazing resource at
'The Board is very pleased with their achievements to date which stand-out for the strong technical work supporting the project, the quality of the build and the speed with which the entire project has been delivered. Together with the improvement works being made to the Pilgan Plant (which are expected to soon increase production capacity from 330ktpa to 360-380ktpa),
'With market conditions remaining extremely buoyant and the spodumene concentrate market continuing to show signs of being extremely short of supply, the Ngungaju Plant is expected to be capable of delivering uncommitted tonnes into the emerging spot market including through our BMX platform. 'We think that will be a very positive development for the market overall, increasing traded volumes, transparency and ultimately supporting the growth of the lithium raw materials supply chain globally.'
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