Fully Licensed, Construction began June 2022 with Commercial Production set for Q4 2023
The Santa Cruz Graphite Project, located in Southern Bahia, is the first of a series of battery metals projects that will be put into production. Brazil is the second-largest graphite-producing region in the world with more than 80 years of continuous mining. The Project has at-surface mineralization in friable materials, and successful large-scale pilot-plant testing (>30t) has been completed. The results of the testing show that approximately 65% of Cg concentrate is +80 mesh with good recoveries and 95-99% Cg.
The Santa Cruz Project is being developed in a phased approach. Phase 1 operations for the 5,000 tpy pilot plant operations are fully licensed, and the Company started construction in June 2022 with commercial production targeted for Q4 2023. Phase 2 operations will represent a larger-scale concentration plant currently planned to produce between 25,000 to 30,000 tpy of concentrate. The sizing of the Phase 2 plant could be increased depending on the successes of the Phase 1 operations, ongoing development of commercial relationships, and market conditions.