PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Graphite developer EcoGraf is weighing further investment in Tanzania, where the company is progressing its Epanko project.

Speaking to Mining Weekly Online on the sidelines of Paydirt’s Africa Downunder conference, EcoGraf COO Dale Harris said the company was studying the establishment of a manufacturing hub to produce spherical graphite in Tanzania.

“It is a pretty power-intensive process, and the technology is rather bespoke, but given Tanzania’s low energy cost, it would not be a bad place to be,” Harris said.

Harris said that the study into the midstream manufacturing hub would match the Stage 1 production of the Epanko project and that the mine and the manufacturing project would likely be brought online with similar timelines.

The company earlier this year updated the economics of Epanko, increasing the project’s pre-production capital cost from the $88.9-million considered in the 2017 bankable feasibility study (BFS) to $134-million.

The initial BFS was based on the production of 60 000 t/y of natural flake graphite products and would have an initial mine life of 18 years, delivering a pre-tax net present value (NPV) of $211-million and yearly earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisastion (Ebitda) of $44.5-million.

The project is now estimated to have a pre-tax ungeared NPV of $348-million and average yearly Ebitda of $79-million over the initial ten years, with an ungeared internal rate of return of 36%.

Harris said that studies were also under way to increase Epanko's capacity to 300 000 t/y with future stages of development.

“We are doing some drilling work at the moment, and we are undertaking conceptual studies around how we will, in time, build the project out. We are very confident that the drilling will give us additional resource,” Harris told Mining Weekly Online.