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TAWANA Resources managing director Mark Calderwood told the Low Emissions and Technology Minerals Conference the past year had been a rollercoaster ride, but would result in the development of the lowest capital cost project in Australia with the highest internal rate of return as production starts early next year.
The internal rate of return was 150-180%, so to conduct a definitive feasibility study for stage one was “a waste of time”, so the company took the decision to move immediately into development, a brave decision that could see it pip Altura Mining as Australia’s next lithium producer. Ore is planned to be fed into the plant in February 2108. Calderwood, who literally wrote the book on Western Australian pegmatites, said Tawana was a “largely unheralded” company, smaller in scale than some of its peers, but with the decision to focus on getting into production over drilling out resources, he said its rapid growth was being emblematic of the latest wave of WA lithium producers. Speed defines Tawana.
A year ago the company had drilled just 28 holes at Bald Hill and had hit spodumene mineralisation in just three, he said.
Today it is midway through constructing its plant, having started construction in June immediately on completion of the pre-feasibility study because of the outstanding results. The company is backed by Germany’s Weir Group, which is owned by a Chinese automaker, which is linked with its initial off-taker, which will take the first two years of production by paying US$880/t for spodumene concentrate. Stage 1 will produce 155,000 tonnes of high grade spodumene and 260,000 pounds of tantalum pentoxide. The company also expects to be one of the world’s largest tantalum producers.
Bald Hill is co-owned with Australian-owned, Singapore-listed Alliance Mineral Assets, and is redeveloping a brownfields tantalum operation to focus on the battery mineral. “The reason this project could be drilled, studied and built all within 14 months is that it is a brownfields operation,” he said. “There is an existing tantalum plant there already, so infrastructure, mining permits, tailings storage facilities. That’s why it’s such a low capex project. We are just adding a DMS (dense media separation) circuit, and we will keep adding DMS and circuits.” He said Bald Hill would be able to ramp up production to keep pace with demand, both by adding circuits and refining the plant processes. While the first DMS circuit cost around $30 million, the second could cost half that and allow a doubling of production. Mining has started with the preferred contractor, although the contract has not been signed. AMA originally owned the old Bald Hill tantalum mine and around 770sq.km of landholding that Tawana farmed into, while also pegging a further 721sq.km of tenure in its own right, and based on its knowledge Calderwood said there was plenty of room to grow. “We have two very large lithium-tantalum-caesium belts on this tenure, and we have barely scratched the surface in terms of drilling,” he said. Over the past six months the Bald Hill partners have proved up a resource of 18.9Mt of lithium and 6Mt of tantalum, enough to support a 3.5-year mine life, which should be increased next year once pit design and infill drilling are completed.
While admitting its not a big resource compared to other emerging lithium players, Calderwood was it was “not a bad result” for limited drilling, and he expected the resource will continue to grow given the orebodies at Bald Hill tend to be extensive and flat-lying. So far just 2% of the one known lithium-bearing pegmatites at Bald Hill have been drilled, but the company is keen to get back to exploration at some stage with an aggressive plan to begin assessing the unexplored areas. “It is one of the biggest pegmatite fields in WA, and I am pretty confident we can continue to grow the resources pretty aggressively over the next 1-10 years,” he said. “Along strike of those is transported soil cover and I have no doubt the pegmatites continue underneath. “We will still be doing exploration drilling in 10 years because the 180km of pegmatites we have located so far are a function of the areas we know of.” Tawana shares last traded at A40c.
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