JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The South Australian government has granted project developer Lincoln Minerals a 21-year mining lease for its Kookaburra Gully graphite project on the Eyre Peninsula, the company announced on Monday.
The approval marks a key milestone in the development of the project, which was expected to produce up to 40 000 t/y of high-grade graphite for an initial seven-year period.
With the mineral lease in hand, Lincoln would shift its focus to completing the project’s Programme for Environment Protection and Rehabilitation, which would allow it to commit to, and start project development at Kookaburra Gully.
“The grant of ML6460 is the key pivot point and milestone to ensure delivery of Lincoln’s transformation from project explorer and developer to an emerging graphite producer, in an industry at the forefront of the growing global green energy market. It is also the derisking step-change awaited by our potential project financiers and offtake customers to now elevate mine construction, financing and operating negotiations to a level where commercial transaction outcomes can be achieved,” chairperson Yubo Jin reported.
MD Dr John Parker said Lincoln was planning to start production at Kookaburra Gully in 2017.
The company was aiming to be a major supplier of graphite to the growing global green energy market, including solar power stations. Lincoln pointed out that graphite was a critical component of the Solastor proposal to build a solar thermal power station at Port Augusta, in South Australia. The Port Augusta proposal would require at least 1 700 graphite blocks, or over 17 000 t of graphite.
The shallow but high-grade resource, located 35 km north-west of Port Lincoln, extended to a depth of at least 125 m, remained open at depth and along strike, and hosted total indicated and inferred mineral resources of 2.20-million tonnes grading 15.1% total graphitic carbon (TGC).
It also abutted the Lincoln-owned Koppio graphite mine which, as a second potential source for the Kookaburra Gully mine, added an inferred mineral resource of 1.85-million tonnes at a grade of 9.8% TGC into the overall project’s mining potential.