Valence to cut 60% of staff
PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Graphite miner Valence Industries this week flagged a workforce reduction of 60% at both its Uley mine site, in South Australia, and its corporate office in Adelaide.
The company said the staff reductions were part of an effort to reduce costs and to operate the existing Uley plant at 50% of its nameplate capacity until April 2016, while a process improvement programme was carried out.
“The focus of the company going forward remains on the production and supply of premium-grade graphite products at a consistent purity range from 90% to 95%,” said Valence MD and CEO Christopher Darby.
“The operational changes we are implementing at the plant level and across the business will facilitate greater value to our business and shareholders and deliver early increases to our Phase 2 expansion programme for improved output capacity.”
The Uley operation delivered its first graphite in June, as part of the plant commissioning to ramp up to the nameplate capacity of 14 000 t/y.
As part of the commissioning and ramp-up, Valence continued with its testwork and maximising both production and quality from the Uley plant. During recent production runs, the company’s external consultant concluded that the existing plant’s capacity and quality could be significantly enhanced to levels that exceeded the nameplate capacity, while process improvements and enhancements could also be implemented.
In particular, the plant testwork confirmed independent laboratory testing that additional grinding of coarser graphite concentrate currently produced at site, resulted in improved concentrate purity across all mesh sizes.
It was expected that the enhancements would accelerate Valence’s production expansion programmes by several months, with production capacity planned to increase by more than 50%, to a level of more than 20 000 t/y, while achieving product purity and detailed specifications to meet current customer requirements.
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