Sovereign Metals and Rio Tinto look to test graphite co-product for SPG production.

Sovereign Metals and Rio Tinto are to collaborate on proving up graphite from Malawi to supply spherical purified graphite (SPG) for the lithium-ion battery market. Rio Tinto is the largest shareholder in Sovereign Metals with a 15% interest. The Kasiya deposit is a rutile-graphite project, which Sovereign are planning to develop into one of the world’s largest graphite producers at 244ktpy with operating costs estimated at $404/t, as well as a significant rutile supply.

The bulk sampling programme will take 100t of ore, which will be processed in Mali to a flake graphite pre-concentrate alongside a heavy mineral concentrate. Final processing of the samples will take place in Canada and Australia to produce 1t of graphite and rutile. A major part of graphite offtake and sales agreements is customer qualification with graphite produced from this programme to be shared with prospective end-users in addition to being used for upscaled downstream testing.

In its PFS, Kasiya’s graphite by-product Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) is 1.8Bt at 1.4% graphite, containing over 24.4Mt of graphite. A graphite-rich pre-concentrate will be produced from the light fraction of the gravity spiral tails and processed in a separate graphite flotation plant to produce a high-quality flake graphite co-product.

A coarse-flake and high-grade graphite product at 96% total graphite content can be produced via this simple flowsheet. This product has over 60% in the large to super-jumbo fractions (+180mic) with overall graphite recovery from the raw sample to product of 62%. As well as being coarse flake, the Kasiya graphite is also highly crystalline and of high purity, which are both beneficial for use in lithium-ion battery anodes.