Name of the Project
Ancuabe graphite project.

Location
Cabo Delgado province, Mozambique.

Project Owner/s
Graphite developer Triton Minerals. Shandong Tianye Mining (STM) has a 19.4% shareholding in Triton.

Project Description
Ancuabe has a maiden Joint Ore Reserves Committee-compliant ore reserve of 24.9-million tonnes at 6.2% total graphitic carbon. A definitive feasibility study (DFS) on the deposits has confirmed the high quality, long life and high margin of the graphite project.

The DFS is based on the production of about 70 000 t/y of graphite concentrate over 27 years.

The mine plan is based on the ore reserve, and less than 5% of the production is sourced from inferred mineral resources, which are mined to access the ore reserve. It is planned that conventional drill-and-blast, load-and-haul, openpit mining will be used to extract the mineralised material.

Run-of-mine (RoM) feed will be defined by grade-control procedures in the pit, and delivered by truck to the RoM pad located centrally between the T12 and T16 deposits. Ancuabe’s process plant will have a throughput of 1.2-million tonnes a year to produce an estimated 70 000 t/y graphite concentrate over the life-of-mine.

The proposed process plant facilities include:

• an RoM pad;
• a tertiary crushing circuit;
• a rod mill feed bin and grinding circuit;
• rougher flotation;
• three stages of attritioning and five stages of cleaner flotation;
• concentrate filtration;
• concentrate drying, classification and bagging of three products;
• tailings thickening and storage; and
• reagents.

Potential Job Creation
Not stated.

Net Present Value/Internal Rate of Return
The project has an unleveraged pretax net present value, at a 10% discount rate, of $298-million and an internal rate of return of 36.8%, with a near-term payback of 3.8 years.

Capital Expenditure
The cost of the project has decreased from $99.1-million to $90.3-million.

Planned Start /End Date
Commissioning is expected in 2023.

Latest Developments
Yantai Oriental Metallurgical Engineering (Yome) has been awarded a contract for front-end engineering design (FEED) works for the process plant and associated nonprocessing infrastructure for the Ancuabe graphite project.

Yome will undertake the FEED work at Ancuabe in the second quarter to enhance the design of the processing plant, thereby reducing risk and targeting a reduction in the processing plant and nonprocess infrastructure capital expenditure.

Key Contracts, Suppliers and Consultants
Lycopodium and ADP Group (process and plant infrastructure); Knight Piésold (tailings and water storage facilities and site geotechnical investigations); CSA Global (geology and resources, as well as mining and mine design); IMO, ALS Metallurgy (metallurgical testwork); Major Drilling (project drilling); Intertek and Bureau Veritas (assays); EOH Coastal & Environmental Services Limited (environmental-, social- and health-impact assessment); MCC International (construction contract); and Yome (FEED).

Contact Details for Project Information
Triton Minerals, tel 61 8 6381 9050 or email info@tritonminerals.com.