The board of Pilbara Minerals has approved the restart of a lithium plant it acquired from Altura Mining, expected to boost the company’s overall production.
The board of Pilbara Minerals has approved the restart of a lithium plant it acquired from Altura Mining, expected to boost the company’s overall production.
Pilbara Minerals, which operates the Pilgangoora lithium mine in the Pilbara, is scheduled to begin a staged restart of the adjacent Ngungaju plant in the coming December quarter.
The restart will require about $39 million in capital over the next 12 months, Pilbara Minerals says.
The Ken Brinsden-led company purchased the plant (also formerly known as Pilgangoora) from Altura Mining’s receivers in December last year.
Altura went into receivership earlier that year after it was unable to refinance its debt.
On Friday, Pilbara Minerals said it expected the Ngungaju plant would have a full production capacity of between 180,000 dry metric tonnes and 200,000dmt of spodumene (lithium) concentrate.
A full ramp-up in production - targeted for mid-next year - is expected to boost Pilbara Minerals' annual output to 560,000-580,000dmt.
“This well-timed acquisition of the Altura lithium operations provides Pilbara Minerals with available spodumene concentrate at the same time the market is expected to grow rapidly to deal with the mass global adoption of lithium-ion battery technology for us in clean energy applications,” Mr Brinsden said.
He noted while production costs would likely be higher in the next financial year, the company was confident in Pilgangoora’s position as a global lithium supplier.
“As a team, we have worked extremely hard to defend our business during what was a difficult period in the market over the last couple of years and we have now emerged much stronger for it,” Mr Brinsden said.
“The combination of unallocated spodumene offtake, burgeoning demand and a sophisticated sales channel in the BMX (Battery Minerals Exchange) platform makes for a potent combination at Pilgangoora.”
Pilbara Minerals is completing a series of plant upgrades to assist in the overall ramp-up in production.
The company has hired local businesses SIMPEC and indigenous-owned IronMerge to complete the first lot of improvements, expected in the September quarter.
Shares in Pilbara Minerals were down 2.8 per cent at 1:57pm AEST to trade at $1.50.
