Premier African Minerals Limited (“Premier” or the “Company”), is pleased to provide a further update on the Zulu Lithium and Tantalum Project (“Zulu”) with particular reference to installation of the interim milling solution and concentrate grades.
Spodumene Concentrate Grade
The Board of Premier continues to expect that the Zulu plant will produce spodumene to the specification required by the Company’s offtake partner.
Test work on Zulu was previously completed by Dorfner Anzaplan GmbH (“Dorfner”), a leading authority in the field of lithium and speciality minerals processing and treatment, and the results were notified on 16 June 2017. Dorfner reported that the rougher (spodumene) concentrate was upgraded in one cleaner stage to a concentrate with 6.5 wt.-% Li2O at 81.8wt.-% recovery.
Geolabs Global Pty Ltd (“Geolabs”) have undertaken further floatation test work on material from Zulu this Summer. The spodumene rougher concentrate obtained from mica tailings at a grind size of p80 150 pm was subjected to a four-stage cleaner test. As a result, Geolabs have reported that a spodumene concentrate with a chemical grade of 6.56% Li2O, 0.26% K2O, 0.47% Na2O, and 2.31% Fe2O3 was achieved, along with an overall spodumene recovery of approximately 81%.
Geolabs further reported that based on the results, it may be worth testing magnetic separation on the final spodumene concentrate to reduce the Fe2O3 and meet the desired specifications. The plant at Zulu includes magnetic separation.
RHA Mill Installation
The planned relocation of the RHA mill to Zulu is an interim mitigation step. To date, the mill has been decommissioned at RHA and transported to the Zulu site and is under installation at present. Completion of civils and final assembly is underway, with installation of other feed and discharge components, pumps, control circuitry and grinding media charge all expected to be complete in the coming month when commissioning is planned to commence.
Stark have estimated that this interim step should result in sufficient correctly sized material feeding to the floatation circuit to achieve close to 50% of design capacity. On this basis the Company expects that new target production levels should be attainable by November 2023.
Market Abuse Regulation
The information contained within this announcement is deemed by the Company to constitute inside information as stipulated under the Market Abuse Regulations (EU) No. 596/2014 as it forms part of UK Domestic Law by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018.
The person who arranged the release of this announcement on behalf of the Company was George Roach.
A copy of this announcement is available at the Company’s website, www.premierafricanminerals.com.
About Geolabs
Geolabs Global is a leading provider of mineral processing solutions for the mining and minerals industry, see https://www.geolabsglobal.com/.
