Munglinup to cost A$52.4m

30th May 2018 By: Esmarie Iannucci - Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor: Australasia

Munglinup to cost A$52.4m

Photo by: Bloomberg

PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The Munglinup graphite project, in Western Australia, is expected to produce around 54 800 t of graphite in concentrate over a nine-year mine life, ASX-listed Mineral Commodities reported.

A prefeasibility study (PFS) has shown that the project would require a capital expenditure of A$52.4-million to achieve the 400 000 t/y operation, with the project estimated to have a post-tax net present value of A$139-million and an internal rate of return of 48%.

The PFS estimated that the project would have average annual earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation of A$42.2-million and net cash flows of A$216.5-million.

“The Munglinup graphite project continues to meet expectations as studies progress through the various stages thanks to many positive aspects of the project, particularly the deposit’s excellent grades,” said Mineral Commodities executive chairperson, Mark Caruso.

“The PFS demonstrates that the project is robust and economically justifiable even at very low pricing scenarios, and without the requirement for downstream value-add processing that many other projects require to get acceptable economic returns.”

The project would involve the development of several small openpits with a flotation plant to concentrate graphite ores. The majority of the ore will come from the Halberts Main pit and supplemental feed from four satellite pits.

The Munglinup project is located within a granted mining lease, and Caruso noted that the environmental and social permitting process was well under way.