Name and Location
Pilgangoora lithium project, Pilbara, Australia.

Client
Altura Mining.

Project Description
Altura’s 100%-owned Pilgangoora project comprises a series of spodumene-bearing pegmatites. The area has been extensively explored in the past for a wide variety of minerals, including tin, tantalum, base metals, nickel and gold. A feasibility study completed on the project has shown superior outcomes to those of the mining study on the project in almost every area. It is based on an ore feed of about 1.4-million tonnes a year to the process plant to deliver average output, at steady state, of 215 000 t/y of spodumene concentrate containing 6% lithium oxide. This is an increase from the 150 000 t/y estimated in the mining study.

The current life-of-mine (LoM) plan is based on direct feed of ore to the process plant from years 1 to 12 while building a low-grade stockpile. Material from the low-grade stockpile will be fed to the process plant in Years 12 to 14. The LoM production target of 18.47-million tonnes consists entirely of probable ore reserves estimated at 18.4-million tonnes.

Mining will be undertaken using a staged approach, starting with a smaller pit mined at the northern limit of the deposit (Stage 1), advancing to the south in seven stages to reach the ultimate designed pit.

Conventional bulk mining methods using hydraulic excavators, dump trucks and drill and blast coupled to a run-of-mine (RoM) stockpile will be used.

Ore will be trucked directly from the blasted faces to the RoM stockpile and fed to the primary crusher using a front-end loader.

Allowance has been made for blending from the RoM and external stockpiles.

The process plant has been designed to process 1.4-million tonnes of Pilgangoora lithium ore, beneficiating RoM ore to a 6.5% lithium concentrate. The plant will create a coarse and fine concentrate using industry-standard separation techniques for hard-rock spodumene production from a pegmatite orebody. A tailings storage facility (TSF) is required to accommodate fine tailings from the process plant and facilitate the recovery of process water. The mine will produce 420 000 t/y of fines tailings over 14 years, based on an indicated and inferred resource of 35.7-million tonnes.

Concentrate will be exported by ship from Port Hedland to lithium producers, predominantly in China, for further processing into a wide range of lithium chemicals, including lithium carbonate (standard and battery grade), lithium hydroxide, lithium metal and lithium chloride.

Net Present Value/Internal Rate of Return
The feasibility study has indicated a net present value (NPV), at a 10% discount rate, of A$382-million from an NPV of A$277-million in the mining study. The project’s internal rate of return (IRR) has increased from 42.5% to 59.5%. Payback has decreased from 2.3 years to 1.7 years, compared with the mining study.

Value
The project has a capital estimate of A$129.26-million.

Duration
Production is planned for the third quarter of 2017, following a nine-month construction period.

Latest Developments
DRA has been awarded the preliminary engineering and design of the processing facilities for the Pilgangoora project.

The company will be responsible for all engineering disciplines to a 30% level of detail, together with capital and operating cost estimates, to a 10% level of precision.
 
Key Contracts and Suppliers
DRA (preliminary engineering and design of the processing facilities).

On Budget and on Time?
Too early to state.

Contact Details for Project Information
Altura Mining, tel +61 8 9488 5100, fax +61 8 9488 5199 or email cosec@alturamining.com.