Feature
Mining at Sahamamy in an open pit.
project, Sahamamy is set to have a place
in the world map of flake-graphite and
to contribute to the quality of life of the
people around the project,” says Poddar.
He adds that the company continues making
progress at its flagship project, Vatomina,
also in Madagascar. Construction at
Vatomina is well under way and the first
production module of 6 000tpa is scheduled
for commissioning in quarter two of 2019.
Poddar explains that this will be followed
by three successive 18 000tpa modules.
Vatomina covers a 25km 2 mining permit
issued for 40 years and is located 70km
from the Toamasina port and 8km aerial
distance from Sahamamy.
Progress on the construction and
equipment manufacturing for the first
module is on target, with ancillary
buildings and facilities, including the
engineering centre constructed and
contributing to the project development.
Over the past 15 months, Tirupati has
performed multiple exploration activities,
including 3 500m of diamond core drilling
as well as pitting and trenching over
2.5km 2 of the 0.6km 2 mineralised area.
SRK Consulting has been engaged for an
updated joint CPR for both projects in
www.africanmining.co.za
Madagascar and setting in the concept of
joint and complementary nature of the two.
SRK expects to roll out enough resources
for more than 15 years for the target
81 000tpa production with substantial
resource potential to be unearthed by
continued exploration over two years.
“This is another milestone achievement
for the company with our first production
at Sahamamy of high-quality flake,
which we are already delivering to the
international markets. We have achieved
this in an extremely short period at
industry-lowest capex and believe that this
proves we have the team and the ability
to execute our growth strategy of building
a fully integrated graphite and graphene
production company,” says Poddar.
Poddar adds that the 3 000tpa produced
at Sahamamy is a first step in building
on long-term sustainable flake-graphite
operations in Madagascar. “The plant
is modular and with progress being
made at Vatomina, our second project,
we envisage that we will be producing
in excess of a 9 000tpa rate in the
second half of 2019. In tandem with
plant development, we will continue to
confirm up more resources across the
mining concessions and expand our
marketing efforts,” says Poddar. b
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