PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Junior FYI Resources on Tuesday announced an extended high purity alumina (HPA) trial production run at its pilot plant facility, in Western Australia.

The trial production run aligns with the staged joint development project announced with aluminium major Alcoa, earlier this month, FYI told shareholders.

The objectives of the pilot plant trial include demonstrating processing efficiencies for the production of HPA through FYI’s fully integrated process flowsheet. The pilot run is expected to produce HPA that will be used for further detailed production qualifications and assessment by prospective customers and offtake parties.

A portion of the output will also be used to progress broader applications and downstream opportunities, including HPA anode development.

“The extended pilot plant trial is an important phase of our HPA project development. We are excited that we are approaching this milestone with Alcoa as it provides us with an ideal opportunity to finalise our initial design and engineering prior to progressing the final engineering phases,” said FYI MD Roland Hill.

“The significant quantity of HPA generated from the pilot plant will support our customer outreach programme, including the provision of further assessment material as requested by the various potential offtake parties seeking to undertake detailed qualification studies on our high quality HPA.”

The pilot plant production is scheduled to start on October 19, with continuous operations planned for two weeks. A short break will be used to analyse production data before a further two-week of continuous operation.

FYI and Alcoa earlier this month announced a binding term sheet for the joint development of FYI’s HPA project, in Kwinana, setting out a pathway to a future joint venture (JV), subject to a final investment decision.

The term sheet contemplates three phases for the development of the project of which FYI would own 35% and Alcoa would own 65%. At the end of each phase, each party would be able to decide whether or not to proceed to the next phase.

Alcoa would be the manager of the development activities, including the proposed future JV. A joint development committee would comprise three Alcoa members and two FYI members.

The parties have agreed to the parallel development of both a demonstration plant, with capacity of 1 000 t/y HPA, and the primary production facility with a capacity of 8 000 t/y HPA.