The owner of Australia’s newest and largest graphite project will fast track its development through to production. Renascor acquired the Arno project on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula late last year with much of the resource contained within 25 m of surface and remaining open along strike. The company has adopted what it says is a three-tiered immediate-term work program to ensure rapid development of the January discovery on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula.
Addressing the Paydirt 2016 South Australian Resources and Energy Investment Conference in Adelaide, Renascor Resources Managing Director David Christensen said the Siviour deposit within the Arno project was of a caliber that warranted fast tracking through development into production.
“Our immediate focus is to conduct further drilling to expand the known graphite resource, undertake further mineral processing testing and complete a scoping study by the third quarter this year,” Christensen said. “Successful completion of these near-term goals can then pave the way for off-take negotiations, permitting, feasibility, construction and production scheduling.”
Located just south of Cowell, about 230 km northwest of Adelaide, Siviour has an indicated and inferred resource of 16.8 million metric tons (mt) at 7.4% total graphitic carbon for 1.24 million mt of contained graphite at a cut-off grade of 3% TGC.
“We have already established scale, very favorable potential strip-ratio and excellent in situ flake size for Siviour,” Christensen said. “Renascor will now move through the very critical metallurgical and product satisfaction phases. Should the results continue in a positive fashion, Siviour looks likely to provide much needed diversity of supply from here in Australia to a global market currently dominated by Chinese production.”
South Australia is home to more than 75% of Australia’s JORC graphite resources, largely on Eyre Peninsula.
