Galaxy signs second offtake agreement for Mt Cattlin

12th July 2016 By: Mariaan Webb - Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor Online

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Lithium miner Galaxy Resources and its Mt Cattlin project partner General Mining Corporation have signed a second binding offtake agreement for lithium concentrate from the Western Australian project.

The second offtake agreement, which also involved a Chinese buyer, would see Galaxy and General Mining sell an additional 15 000 t of lithium concentrate in the 2016 calendar year and 60 000 t in 2017.

In March, the joint venture (JV) partners announced the signing of term sheets with offtake customers in China for the sale of 60 000 t of lithium concentrate at $600/t for 2016 and a volume commitment of 120 000 t in 2017, with final pricing for 2017 to be confirmed in the final quarter of this year.

The JV reported on Tuesday that it had entered into definitive contracts for 45 000 t for 2016 and contracted a total of 120 000 t of 2017’s production.

The JV also announced that it would retain 15 000 t of 2016’s forecast production for a potential spot or auction sale process later this year, in light of the continued robustness in lithium carbonate pricing since the offtake agreements were first negotiated.

The JV partners had banked a total of $13.5-million in prepayments from the two Chinese costumers.

Galaxy and General Mining, which earlier this year announced their merger, restarted the Mt Cattlin mine in the first quarter of 2016. The mine would start spodumene and tantalum production in the third quarter of this year.