PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Lithium miner Pilbara Minerals has narrowed its full year losses for the year ended June from the A$99.3-million reported in 2020 to A$51.4-million.

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization also reached A$21.4-million, compared with a loss of A$33.9-million last financial year, on the production of 281 440 t of spodumene concentrate, up from the 116 256 t in 2020.

Pilbara on Thursday said that a combination of improved market conditions and strong operational performance at the company’s Pilgangoora lithium/tantalum operations in Western Australia have underpinned a A$58.4-million improvement in the cash gross margin generated from operations to A$46.2-million, compared with the cash gross margin loss of A$12.2-million last year.

In addition, the completion of several key process plant improvement projects resulted in increased feed, higher use and improved lithia recoveries, leading to a reduction in the average unit cash operating cost to A$519/t, supporting an improved cash gross margin from operations.

Pilbara MD Ken Brinsden said that the deployment of the moderated production strategy resulted in the company being able to sustain operations during tough market conditions and it has emerged stronger than ever.

“Our world-class asset base has been further enhanced by the Altura acquisition, as we now own two processing plants and have the ability to rapidly ramp-up production from the second plant into a market that is low in spodumene concentrate supply. Importantly, production from this second plant is completely uncommitted.

“By using the downtime wisely to undertake plant improvement and optimisation works, the Pilgan plant is performing better than ever and we are now focused on increasing production capacity to up to 380 000 t/y of spodumene concentrate,” he said.

“This additional capacity, along with the restart of the Ngungaju Plant, will see us supply the market with around 550 000 t/y to 580 000 t/y of spodumene concentrate by June 2022 through our existing offtake agreements and newly-established BMX platform.

“By using the BMX platform, we will have an additional sales channel to help realise more of the available margin available between the value of spodumene concentrate and lithium hydroxide in this buoyant market, which will be an outstanding outcome for us and our shareholders.”