TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Vanadium producer Largo Resources has achieved two new production records over consecutive days this week at its Maracas Menchen mine, in Brazil, and expects continued growth.
The Bahia-state project achieved a new daily production record on Monday of 27 t of vanadium pentoxide (V2O5), which represented about 102% of the plant's daily design capacity.
However, this record performance was beaten on Tuesday, when daily production was 29 t of V2O5, or about 110% of the plant's daily design capacity.
"These records demonstrate the plant's increasing operating efficiency as well as prove that we are able to achieve stability at levels at and above the plant's design capacity,” president and CEO Mark Smith stated.
TSX-V-listed Largo had also recently achieved a new record for a single production shift of 11 t, with there being three production shifts in a day, indicating that the plant could possibly increase daily production rates further.
Meanwhile, Monday also marked another production milestone when the Maracas operation produced its ten-millionth pound of V2O5 since production started in August 2014.
"This is an enormous achievement for Largo and the Maracas Menchen mine. Following a record month of production in July of 607 t, we have again set new records in August. We expect to see continuing growth in average production rates over the next several months as our engineering improvements are installed,” Smith said.