PERTH (miningweekly.com) – ASX-listed Mineral Commodities (MRC) has reported a Joint Ore Reserves Committee-compliant indicated and inferred maiden resource of 1.78-million tonnes at its Skaland graphite project, in Norway.
Grading 22% total graphitic carbon, the Skaland project is estimated to host some 397 000 t of contained graphite.
“After completing the acquisition of Skaland in October 2019, we’ve moved quickly to implement the requisite mine planning and scheduling necessary to deliver on our near-term goals of optimising concentrate production before increasing output,” said MRC executive chairperson Mark Caruso.
“We’re very pleased to release this maiden resource at Skaland, the highest grade resource for any operating graphite mine in the world, which not only becomes the foundation of our plans to build on our existing graphite concentrate business, but also underwrites our strategy to become Europe’s first vertically integrated producer of natural graphite anode material.”
The Skaland operation is Norway’s only graphite mine and produces some 10 000 t/y of graphite, accounting for around 2% of the global annual natural flake graphite production. MRC is currently working to increase production to some 16 000 t/y.