PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Manganese miner Element 25 on Thursday said it was still assessing opportunities to place additional conventional and non-conventional material into the market while commodity prices were strong.
The ASX-listed company has just shipped 35 002 t of manganese concentrate from its Butcherbird operation through Port Hedland, telling shareholders that the contract price received had been higher than previous shipments owing to the buoyant prevailing manganese market.
This higher price offset the higher-than-forecast diesel and shipping costs, which remain above long-term trends owing to ongoing geopolitical and Covid-related issues.
Meanwhile, the company is also working on process plant optimisation to address throughput bottlenecks caused by materials handling challenges, due to the high clay content feed at Butcherbird.
As part of optimisation studies being undertaken at the plant, Element 25 is also conducting engineering design work on the Stage 2 expansion of the Butcherbird project, focusing initially on the primary comminution stage and the final beneficiation step, which currently uses optical ore sorters.
As part of the review process, dense media separation is being assessed as an alternative to ore sorters, to provide more consistent results in terms of manganese recovery and grade.