Tag Archives: Pilgangoora

Altura Mining scores first lithium goal at Pilgangoora

Altura Mining has become the latest lithium-focused company to transition from developer to producer after declaring first concentrate from its Pilgangoora project in Western Australia.

The achievement comes only 16 months after the company broke ground on the project and two months since crushing operations began.

Altura joins the likes of Tawana Resources, Mineral Resources and Pilbara Minerals as new market entrants looking to sell their Western Australia-based lithium products to a growing number of mostly Asian buyers.

At full production, the Pilgangoora processing plant will have the capacity to produce 220,000 tonnes per year of 6% spodumene concentrate. Like many of its competitors, Altura is weighing up an expansion. Stage two of Pilgangoora could see capacity double to 440,000 t/y.

Altura said it has been encouraged by on-site testing of the first production batch by laboratory operator Intertek, which showed a concentrate grade exceeding the industry standard 6% lithium oxide and specifications that fit “comfortably within those required by the company’s offtake agreements”.

The first shipment of concentrate to be shipped to one of its offtake partners, Lionergy, is expected next month. Lionenergy has indicated it would like to receive as much as possible of the 100,000 t/y minimum supply allocation under a binding offtake agreement as the mine ramps up in the second half of the year, Altura said.

Altura Managing Director James Brown said: “Our focus now is to ramp up production to full capacity over the coming six months and then we can turn our attention to the expansion project.”

Pilgangoora lithium-tantulum project on track for first shipment in August

The commissioning of the Pilgangoora lithium-tantalum project in Western Australia has continued, with the company racking up 1,000 tonnes of coarse and fines concentrate from its plant.

Plant performance, component operation and timing are all in line with expectations, with Pilgangoora on track for the first shipment of next month.

Pilbara Minerals’ project is expected to produce around 330,000 tonnes per year of spodumene concentrate when phase one is complete. A phase two expansion could see this rise to more than 800,000 t/y.

The company produced first coarse (dense-heavy media separation circuit) concentrate last month (pictured).

With both primary sub-circuits (fines and coarse) successfully commissioned, fines concentrates can undergo final processing through the dressing circuit, which is one of the last sub-systems to be commissioned within the concentrator.

Pilbara Minerals Managing Director and CEO Ken Brinsden said all of the plant’s components had, so far, met or exceeded expectations.

“The extensive planning and due-diligence undertaken by our engineering, construction and production teams is now well and truly paying dividends as we progressively bring the plant on line and ramp-up its capacity,” he said.