Premier African Minerals Limited (“Premier” or the “Company”) is pleased to provide an update on progress at operations at Zulu Lithium and Tantalum (“Zulu”) since the Zulu engineering team took responsibility over the operation and management of the plant in March
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Highlights:
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Ore grade and contained spodumene in the ore fed to the plant is at grades consistently ranging from 1.1% Li20 to 1.7% Li2O.
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Stability in the comminution circuit has now been attained and the new mill and jet sizers are now consistently able to provide the required tonnage of correctly sized material to the thickener.
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The OEM for the float plant and thickener is now finally able to properly optimise and fully commission the floatation plant.
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The Zulu Plant
Preliminary finding from the independent EPCM contractor (as announced on 13 March 2024) has confirmed a number of design issues related to the flow of material between various components of the plant.
This affected the comminution and material sizing plant components. Material flows from mill discharge to thickener feed are now stable.
All efforts are now focussed on the floatation plant. The key issues fall into two categories as set out below together with current remedial actions and anticipated timelines.
Throughput
In original test work, mica content was estimated at 17%. In early processing actual mica content is closer to 27%. This is currently restricting throughput to approximately 26 tons per hour of dry solids and the theoretical SC6 output is 4.5 ton per hour until certain pumps and valves in the mica section are upgraded. The OEM expects these components to be at site over the course of April to enable an increase in throughput to the target rate of approximately 37 tons per hour.
Grade and Recovery
Whilst the plant has demonstrated its capability to produce SC6 to grade, it is not able to do so consistently and achieve the desired and required recoveries at present. The reasons include circulation between float cells, resident time in float cells, and “in cell” slurry density. Our Zulu engineering team in conjunction with the OEM team has identified both the cause and the remedy and is in the process of attending to flow changes between the various floatation cells. This problem is expected to be rectified in the coming weeks.
George Roach, CEO commented, “Premier believes we are now in the home stretch with commissioning the Zulu plant operation.
Our team at Zulu and our OEMs should be commended for what has been achieved in the past 5 weeks and Premier looks forward to finally getting this plant over the line. We have greater than 1,000 tons of mixed mica rich and spodumene concentrate (not to grade) and with recent price improvements we are exploring ways to commercially release some value for the product available. SC6 will be held back until we have sufficient at grade material to ship to our prepayment and off-take partner.
Premier need to express its deep appreciation to all who have stuck with us through this tortuous journey and to our prepayment and off-take partner for their understanding and support.”
Market Abuse Regulations
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 (“UK MAR”).
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
