Name of the Project
Epanko graphite project.

Location
Tanzania.

Client
Kibaran Resources.

Project Description
An updated bankable feasibility study (BFS) has demonstrated a highly robust business case for a 60 000 t/y operation at Epanko and has also substantially enhanced and derisked the project’s development.

The project has an ore reserve of 11.7-million tonnes grading 8.32% total graphitic carbon for 971 000 t graphite supporting an 18-year mine life.

The BFS is based on a mining contractor scenario.

Mining will be undertaken using the conventional drill-and-blast technique, with the fleet comprising an 80 t backhoe excavator and 40 t off-highway haul trucks.

Mining operations will start in the Eastern pit and progress to the Western pit in Year 6 to the scheduled reserve exhaustion in Year 16. The average life-of-mine strip ratio is expected to be 0.4:1 (waste to ore).

The Western deposit entails mining a strike length of 1 360 m along the top of the ridge to a depth of 210 m in the south. 

The Eastern deposit, located partially over a hill within a small valley, will be mined to a depth of 125 m and will have a strike extent of 350 m.

The process plant is designed with a throughput capacity of 720 000 t/y for an average total graphitic carbon grade of 96% and average production of 60 000 t/y. The plant is based on a crush-and-grind comminution circuit (two-stage crushing circuit with single-stage rod mill), followed by rougher flotation.

The tailings are reground in a ball mill before entering the scavenger flotation. The rougher and scavenger concentrates will be combined and transferred into the primary cleaner section comprising polishing mills and cleaner flotation banks.

The concentrate will then be screened into fractions of two sizes, with subsequent polishing and four-stage cleaning, and no further milling required in the cleaning circuit.

The product will be dewatered, dried and screened into saleable size fractions. The flow sheet is optimised for a high yield of large flakes; however, it could be easily modified to get higher carbon content by flotation if required. There is potential to extend the forecast mine life beyond 18 years.

Potential Job Creation
Not stated.

Net Present Value/Internal Rate of Return
The project has a pretax net present value, at a 10% discount rate, of $211-million and an internal rate of return of 38.9%, with a 3.4-year payback.

Value
Capital costs have been estimated at $88.9-million.

Duration
The project will take about 19 months to complete.

Latest Developments
Optimisation testwork on the Epanko project has flagged the potential trebling of planned battery-grade graphite production.

The testwork has confirmed the positive results of Kibaran’s new purification process, which uses simple chemicals without the need for hydrofluoric acid.

The new development could double the value of the Epanko project, given that every lithium-ion battery that uses the purified natural graphite will have been subjected to hydrofluoric acid.

“The purification results are revolutionary given the elimination of hydrofluoric acid. We remain confident that this will significantly assist the company to secure a major share of the market and, given expected growth, this will lead to a significant growth at both the mine and battery manufacturing facility,” Kibaran MD Andrew Spinks has said.

Kibaran has now increased the planned production rate of its battery graphite to ramp up from 6 000 t/y to 20 000 t/y. The expansion has been supported by major Japanese and Korean anode manufacturers, which expect future demand requirements to increase by between 300% and 400% by 2020.

The feasibility study for production of battery spherical graphite is a separate study to the recently reported Epanko 60 000 t/y bankable feasibility study, which has been the catalyst for the start of the debt-financing process for the development of the mine to produce natural flake graphite products for the traditional graphite markets.

The spherical graphite feasibility study is expected to be completed during the final quarter of this year.

Key Contracts and Suppliers
None stated.

On Budget and on Time?
Not stated.

Contact Details for Project Information
Kibaran Resources, tel +61 8 6424 9000 or email info@kibaranresources.com.