TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – TSX-V-listed Largo Resources on Tuesday said its Maracas Menchen mine, located in Bahia state, Brazil, was ramping up as planned, producing at a rate of between 8 t/d and 12 t/d of vanadium pentoxide, or about 40% of total capacity.

The operation, which started production in early August, had, to date, achieved peak output of 14 t/d, which represented about 50% of total capacity, the Canadian miner said.

Largo had made frequent shipments of material and recorded the first revenues from sales.

Output volumes were expected to continue to rise steadily over the coming months, with the goal of reaching the project's Phase 1 nameplate capacity of 9 600 t/y within 12 months of starting operations.

"We are extremely pleased with our recent progress. We have established stable operations at each area of the plant and have demonstrated that we can run each system effectively. Although total plant is currently stable at 40% of capacity, it is important to note that we have now successfully run many of the subsystems at their full capacity levels,” COO Michael Mutchler said.

He added that Largo’s efforts would now focus on debottlenecking areas where the company encountered capacity restraints, continuing to improve the efficiency of recoveries and generally improving efficiencies throughout the plant. “We are confident that the ramp-up will continue to progress well and that we will meet or exceed our capacity targets by or before month 12,” Mutchler said.

Largo also on Tuesday announced that it had appointed Allan Venter as production manager on its operations team. Venter had more than ten years senior management experience in producing vanadium pentoxide and ferrovanadium, having worked at Xstrata's Vantech operation and at the Evraz Vametco plant, in South Africa.

Largo on Monday closed a C$30-million private placement financing to shore up its coffers with working capital as the ramp up continued.